<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>A Place Called Home by Lisa_Telramor</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26093410">A Place Called Home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisa_Telramor/pseuds/Lisa_Telramor'>Lisa_Telramor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Character Death, Child Adoption, Coming of Age, Concept Exploration, Demigods, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Homoromantic Asexual, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Poison, Sex repulsed asexual, Starting Over, because our omega is sex repulsed, heats in a non sexy way, late antiquity rome, on-brand angst, with a hint of fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:35:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>36,251</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26093410</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisa_Telramor/pseuds/Lisa_Telramor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>From a young age, Caecus knows the worst thing to present as on the streets is to be an Omega. For a street kid barely managing, all he can hope for is to be a Beta. Of course life isn't that kind.</p>
<p>Caecus presents as Omega and his mind rejects everything about it. He's lucky he has someone in his life looking out for him, or he doesn't know what he'd do.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Male Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Place Called Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So this is ofic, and generally I would not be posting ofic on AO3. That said, this is technically an ABO fanfic-style AU of my own unfinished novel. So I decided the best place to put this is here. I wanted to explore the concept of asexuality (in this case sex-repulsed asexuality) in an ABO universe, and not having any strong headcanons for characters in fandoms I write with asexuality, but having a very firm ace character in my original works, this happened with my own characters instead of in a regular fanfic.</p>
<p>Because this is a fanfic of an original work, a lot of details of the original novel (which never had an end hahaaaaa =_=;; ) are not explored in detail. Mostly what you need to know is that this is set in 520-something-537 Rome in the late antiquity period. The main character is a demigod, but does not know it for most of his life, and he had visions when he glimpses the sky. Most of his backstory is glanced upon in this story, so hopefully more isn't needed to be said here. (please tell me if something is very ??? because I've lived in this novel universe for most of the last decade and am not sure what is or isn't clear to anyone not me at this point) Obviously the original novel didn't focus on Caecus's (the MC) sexuality and a secondary gender. It was more a story about him coming to terms with his powers and starting to take back his life after some years of grief and disempowerment. In the novel, the demigod characters, their powers, and their group were the central focus. Here the focus is around Caecus's relationships and his relationship with his own body and ABO gendered identity. (seriously please ask if something isn't clear or you want to know more)</p>
<p>For anyone who wanted an exploration of asexuality in an ABO universe, this is for you &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As a child, Caecus knew about secondary genders. They were one of those things that adults had, like jobs, being tall, and having to sit through boring things all the time. They didn’t seem very important at the time, not really, though his mother used to hold him and talk about how one day he’d grow up and marry some beta girl or an omega like the stories his nanny told him. He knew his mother was an omega and his father was a beta and that was all he knew. Secondary genders were something adults worried about, not children, so it didn’t occur to Caecus at all that one day they would be something he’d have to worry about.</p>
<p>At least not when he lived with his parents.</p>
<p>It was a different story after he found himself on the street.</p>
<p>It was alphas running the gangs and who made up the higher ups in the guard. Betas were common enough, but omegas… If there was one thing Caecus learned in his first month one the street, it was that the worst thing he could present as would be an omega. It was fine if you were wealthy enough to hold property or own a business; an omega son or daughter was a good marriage token. But for someone poor? Being an omega was almost a guarantee you’d end up in a whore house.</p>
<p>In the first month, a boy a few years older than him presented as an omega during the night. Caecus would never forget how only a few hours later, a woman showed up and coins exchanged hands. The boy had been crying, in pain from presenting, and simultaneously compelling and repulsive to Caecus’s senses at the time.</p>
<p>It was something that had scared all of them, made them struggle to be useful because if they could prove themselves, maybe they wouldn’t have the same fate if biology proved cruel. A few of the girls in their group tried to seduce the second in command, but Caecus could tell that was a bad idea even before they did it. To the people running their ragtag gang of cast off children, they weren’t worth anything. It wouldn’t matter if they were sleeping with one of them, they’d still sell them out for their own benefit.</p>
<p>If he was alone, Caecus would probably have resigned himself to a life spent struggling to eat or sleep or get past one more guard until nature dealt its hand and he made do with whatever it gave him. But he wasn’t alone. Solitus was two years older and was like the sun to Caecus’s eyes. Caecus didn’t know what Sol saw in him, but he was grateful for every moment they spent together. He didn’t even get mad when Caecus had one of his fits.</p>
<p>“It’s not like you can help it,” Sol said the second time one happened—the first time had been full of panic and frantic checks that Caecus wasn’t dying. “It’s a problem, but I’m not gonna leave you behind because of it.”</p>
<p>He was like that. He took Caecus under his wing and showed him how to pick pockets and hide quickly. He took in other kids too, ones that were timid and bottom of the heap, and maybe they were all just the dregs of the gang, but Sol made it feel more like a family. They slept in a pile and shared what didn’t get snatched away by the older kids. And little by little they got stronger.</p>
<p>“I wonder if I’ll present as an alpha,” Sol said on one of the clear nights when he pulled Caecus up to the rooftops to escape the press of unwashed bodies and too-crowded rooms. “Then I can make my own gang, you know? I’ll take you and Altus and Lacuna and Mica and we can all start our own gang.”</p>
<p>“But we don’t know what any of us is going to present as,” Caecus said. “For all you know we’ll all be omegas.”</p>
<p>Sol huffed. “Don’t be so pessimistic. At least one of you has to be a beta.”</p>
<p>“Wow, if only one of us is at least a beta, that sounds more like the opposite of optimism.” Their group of cast offs was too timid as a whole to have alphas. If any of them would be, it would be Sol.</p>
<p>“What do you think you’ll be?” Sol asked.</p>
<p>“A beta, I hope.” The stars were bright and Caecus was glad that today at least he’s able to look at them without one of his fits. They’d been happening more now, little flashes of things that he’s starting to realize were things that were going to happen. It was never clear though, and always misleading in some way. It’s frustrating because if he could just figure it out, maybe he could use it. He looked at pinpricks of light between his fingertips almost wishing it was possible to touch them. “My father was a beta, I think.” He was still not sure if his father really was his father, not with how his mother had had a meltdown, not with how she’d rejected him so thoroughly and turned to his father like she was trying to make something right by casting Caecus out.</p>
<p>“Your mother?”</p>
<p>Caecus bit his lip. “Omega.”</p>
<p>“Hmm.” Sol touched his arm. He was only a little older than Caecus but he looked like he could make the world stop and listen, make anything happen when Sol fixed his eyes on him. “I won’t let them sell you if you are. I’ll steal you away and keep you safe. We’re in this together.”</p>
<p>“And the others?” Caecus waited. Because they were like family, but Sol only dragged him up here like this.</p>
<p>Sol met his gaze for a long moment, serious, before turning away. “I’d try my best. But if I had to choose, I’d pick you.”</p>
<p>Caecus’s heart ached. “Why?” he had to ask. “I’d just bring you down with me.”</p>
<p>“Because I want to,” Sol said, like it was just that simple. “And I like you. You make me feel like I can be something.”</p>
<p>“Right, because I need you,” Caecus said cynically.</p>
<p>Sol snorted. “Maybe a little. But you believe I can make it, don’t you?”</p>
<p>Caecus looked at Sol spread out beside him and how shadows made his recently broken nose look even more crooked. How his smile drew him in. How his eyes were bright with a vision of the future that was nothing like the confusing flash of images Caecus got. He wanted to believe in the future Sol saw. “Yeah,” he said. “You can make it.”</p>
<p>“See?” Sol kept grinning. “I need you.”</p>
<p>“We all believe in you, Sol.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but they’re them and you’re you.”</p>
<p>Caecus rolled his eyes and Sol retaliated with an elbow and next thing Caecus knew they were tangled up in an impromptu wrestling match under the stars. Caecus tapped out after a few minutes, head stuffed under Sol’s arm and his shoulder protesting a pin. “I give.”</p>
<p>Sol laughed and let him go, all warm and heavy over him and something in Caecus’s mind trembled.</p>
<p>He didn’t share Sol’s optimism about their presentations, but he could hope.</p>
<p>He could hope.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Sol presented as a beta at fourteen, all gangly limbs and stubborn ferocity that almost rivaled an alpha’s. Not enough though. He picked one too many fights and then it wasn’t a matter of if they’d strike out on their own, they had to.</p>
<p>Lacuna and Mica followed. Altus, presenting as beta a few months earlier, had finally managed to get a foot in the door and out of the bottom rungs. It stung, leaving him behind, but they made do. They had each other’s backs and slept in a ruin with old blanket scraps and shared body heat for comfort.</p>
<p>It was good until Caecus’s fits got so bad that he started covering his eyes all the time. He’d realized by now that it was the sky that triggered them. The futures the visions showed were clearer than they used to be, but no less unwanted.</p>
<p>He hated feeling useless. He was the lookout, the beggar of the group, the one that got the safe jobs while the others risked their necks because he wasn’t reliable enough to do more. Lacuna and Mica didn’t seem to blame him. Lacuna was the one to come up with how to keep track of the roads when he couldn’t see, her hand on his elbow as he figured out the trick of counting steps and listening for landmarks. Mica sometimes joined him on begging too, his wide, startlingly blue eyes winning them money when pity for a ‘blind’ child did not.</p>
<p>They didn’t blame him and Sol still dragged him to have private time but Caecus blamed himself, so he started trying to use the visions. It didn’t work at first, but the first time he managed to predict something and make things work in their favor… Caecus dedicated a lot more time to trying after that.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Caecus was almost fourteen when he presented, too malnourished for it to go smoothly. It started with a pain in his gut, soft at first, but it grew until he was shaking and covered in cold sweat. It was like he’d eaten something foul, but no one else was sick. It didn’t even occur to him what was happening until Lacuna swore. She’d presented beta a year before and had the best nose out of their group, closer to an alpha’s than the typical beta.</p>
<p>“Solitus,” she said. “His scent.”</p>
<p>“Scent?” Sol’s hand rubbed his back and Caecus wondered why the touch felt like it was too much. Like every nerve in his back was alight. He whimpered. And Sol swore too. “Caecus.”</p>
<p>“Am I dying?” he panted, guts clenching.</p>
<p>Sol’s hands were so gentle they barely touched him as they skimmed over his back. “No. No, you’re not.” His voice was gentle too, and that wasn’t Sol. He wasn’t the sort to treat them like they were breakable, and so Caecus knew that something was very wrong.</p>
<p>“Sol?”</p>
<p>“I think… I think you’re presenting as an omega.”</p>
<p>“No.” Caecus moaned. “No, no.” Pain and heat and sweat and Sol’s too soft touch. Someone took a breath and then took another, like they were scenting him and—damn, his scent. “Sol—!” he whispered, frantically. “Sol I can’t—!”</p>
<p>“Shh. I got you. Lacuna, Mica,” he said quietly. “I need you to make sure no one comes close.”</p>
<p>Caecus caught a glimpse of Mica’s pale face, the horror there, because they all knew what presenting omega meant.</p>
<p>“Is he… are we going to…?” Mica whispered.</p>
<p>“No.” Sol’s voice was like a whip crack, firm and final. He almost sounded like an alpha with the force he put behind it. “He’s ours. We’re not letting anyone else have him.”</p>
<p>Lacuna let out a breath. “Okay.” Caecus couldn’t tell if they were relieved or not. He couldn’t tell much of anything right now, the world was just flashes of color and voices and pain.</p>
<p>“It hurts,” he whimpered.</p>
<p>“I know,” Sol said. He hesitated. “You want me to…help?”</p>
<p>It took a moment to understand. What being an omega meant. What <em>presenting</em> meant, his first heat slamming into his body like a plague. Caecus flinched away from him. “No. No nono no.”</p>
<p>“Caecus—“</p>
<p>“Nononononono.” He curled up tighter. Everything hurt. His guts were rearranging themselves and his body testing organs that had been all but vestigial until this point. Was it supposed to hurt this much? Was he supposed to feel like his skin was burning? Was he supposed to feel so horrified at the thought of hands pulling his body open to another’s touch?</p>
<p>Heats, he thought, were always described as fierce pain and pleasure mixed in one. Where the body only wanted sex and lots of it.</p>
<p>He didn’t want sex. He’d never wanted sex and the thought of being touched was repulsive. Even Sol’s gentle touch on his back was suddenly too much, too close.</p>
<p>“Don’t touch me,” Caecus said. “Don’t.”</p>
<p>Sol backed an arm’s length away, conflicted.</p>
<p>Caecus panted. Why did everything hurt so badly? There was an ache inside him, not just his gut, and an awful slick feeling between his legs that made him want to throw up.</p>
<p>Sol reached out again and Caecus couldn’t stop his instincts as he snapped teeth at him, a growl rattling in his chest that was too pathetic to be really threatening, but god if his body wasn’t trying.</p>
<p>“Okay,” Sol said. “Okay. No touching. No sex. I won’t do anything you don’t want.”</p>
<p>He sounded strained, but if it was the situation or Caecus’s scent it wasn’t clear. The world was starting to go out of focus, his body taking up his mental processes until there was just the heat and pain. God. Why? Tears slid down his face. If could have been hours or minutes, he didn’t know, before Sol’s scent filled his nose. Everything smelled stronger now, and he could even smell himself, a mix of omega pheromones, the spicy smell of heat, and a sour mixture of pain and fear cutting through it all.</p>
<p>“Breathe,” Sol’s voice said. He sounded hoarse. Who knew how long he might have been talking. “Please breathe, you’re gonna pass out.”</p>
<p>Oh. That was why his chest hurt and his vision was nothing but black and white spots. Caecus reached for something to ground himself to and latched on to Sol’s leg. Somehow Sol touching him felt wrong, but Caecus touching Sol felt okay. Sol’s scent was a mix of sour fear and shame over arousal, but beneath it all was just Sol. Warm and a little bitter and off with sweat, but Sol and familiar and everything Caecus needed to pull him out of the spiral of pain. He breathed, and it didn’t matter that Sol was a beta, not an alpha. His scent was safety and comfort and family.</p>
<p>“It’s going to be okay,” Sol said, trembling even as he still didn’t touch.</p>
<p>Caecus loved him for it. More than he’d loved him already.</p>
<p>“Is this helping at all?” Sol asked desperately.</p>
<p>Caecus pressed his face into his thigh and breathed and shook, curled around Sol like he was the only thing holding him together. When an age later, Sol slowly ran fingers through his hair, it eased some of the ache in him. He didn’t know what his body wanted, or maybe he did, but the mind rejected it so much that the body followed even against instinct. At least he could accept this….</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Caecus’s first heat lasted two days, short for an omega, but too long for the sanity of his cobbled together family.</p>
<p>He came back to himself, glued to Sol’s side, sticky and worn out and aching all over even though he hadn’t done anything at all. Maybe being tense for two days could do that.</p>
<p>“What now?” Mica asked in a small voice once it was all over. The scent of heat lingered unpleasantly no matter how much they aired their tiny space out.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Sol admitted, still keeping a hand on Caecus—he didn’t know why he felt calmer with the contact, but he’d gotten anxious the second day whenever Sol moved away. Its presence now soothed away lingering fear. “I’ll look into it though.”</p>
<p>“Look into what?” Lacuna asked, her hands balled in her lap. “He’s an omega. Yeah, heats are only four times a year, but we can’t protect him forever.” Her eyes were wide and lost. She’d seen two girls taken before. Had seen people consider taking her as well.</p>
<p>Sol bared his teeth. “Anyone tries to touch any of you, they’ll regret it.”</p>
<p>“Sol, you’re a half-grown alpha-wannabe,” she said.</p>
<p>Sol’s posturing turned to a much more familiar smile. “I’m gonna be better than any alpha. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you guys.”</p>
<p>Words aside, they worried.</p>
<p>Words aside, Caecus dreaded what might be in his future. Lacuna had a point. There was only so much Sol could do to protect him.</p>
<p>“I’ve got this,” Sol said with confidence Caecus could only hope was real.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When Mica presented a week later, Caecus spent his time playing guard and trying not to think about how Sol might help Mica through his heat. It was none of his business and it certainly wasn’t something to be jealous over. He didn’t even want that sort of help from Sol anyway. That said, he tried to block out the muffled whimpers and pleas and the way the air smelled all wrong to his nose. Lacuna didn’t meet his eyes for the three miserable days it took for Mica to come out of it.</p>
<p>Mica couldn’t meet any of their eyes and Sol just looked tired. Tired and, when he didn’t think Caecus was looking, overwhelmed.</p>
<p>Sixteen was awfully young to try and lead a pack. Caecus would follow him anywhere anyway.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It was days later; Sol came back with a package and a grim expression. “I got this,” he said, pulling Caecus and Mica aside. “It keeps you from getting pregnant. Eat it after your heat, and you’ll be okay. Eat it every day for a month and you won’t ever have children.”</p>
<p>“Where did you get that?” Mica asked, looking at the herbs pressed in Sol’s carefully wrapped little package. “That’s. That’s the stuff the whore houses use to—”</p>
<p>“I know.” Sol gave a shaky sigh. “I know. But we don’t have resources for babies, and… and if something ever goes wrong, I want you to have choices.”</p>
<p>Caecus took one of the rolled doses into his palm. “One a day for a month?”</p>
<p>“One a day,” Sol said, serious.</p>
<p>Caecus tossed the bitter herb in his mouth, chewing and swallowing with a grimace.</p>
<p>Mica looked horrified. “Wait. Shouldn’t you think about this? This is sterility. This is… this is ruining if you ever want to have kids, be a good mate down the line—”</p>
<p>“Don’t want that,” Caecus said. “Don’t want to have kids. Don’t want anything to do with how you have them either. If…” he faltered. “If I got caught, if someone ever. I don’t want that.”</p>
<p>Mica shook his head shifting back away from the parcel. “It’d be one foot in the whore house to do that, Sol.”</p>
<p>“I get it,” Sol said. “All the same, you should take a dose. Because of your heat being so recent.”</p>
<p>Mica reluctantly took a dose.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Caecus dreaded his next heat. The first one had been bad enough. And to make things worse, it was like his visions were happening all the time now. He was spending more time with a blindfold on when he wasn’t in their cramped, ruin of a home than not.</p>
<p>It worried everyone. It worried him. When they slept in a huddle, Mica and Sol curled around him with Lacuna around Mica like they all could protect each other that way. Like it could shield them from something none of them had power over.</p>
<p>The visions lasted longer now. Sometimes it was more than just a vision, like now, standing in a hazy ruin, fog swirling around a garden wall. Bitter orange trees with new green fruit smelling sharp and green, almost too clear and bold colored compared to his limited daily sight. Here he didn’t feel like an omega. He didn’t have a scent either. He just was. Caecus wished this were the real him, not just some hallucination brought on by whatever caused his visions.</p>
<p>It felt so real.</p>
<p>The stone wall was rough beneath his fingertips. The orange tree leaves were smooth and glossy and just a bit damp from the fog. If he picked a direction and just started walking, would he ever return to reality?</p>
<p>The clouds parted above him, a perfect circle of blue, and he fell up into it like the natural order of the world had been turned on its head.</p>
<p>It ended with the usual sort of vision; colors and pictures flashing together in an incomprehensible story. Two packs of dogs meeting. The pack merging to grow. Firelight. Running paws, a single bloody paw-step. Flash of teeth and lolling tongues, but in anger or joy?</p>
<p>He woke on his back, bruised, and the wash he was supposed to be doing crumpled around him. Surprisingly, no one had looted him while he was down. If anything, he was being avoided, like he had an illness they could catch. Caecus didn’t know of any illnesses like what he had.</p>
<p>Someone, Caecus thought, with surety in his stomach, was going to join their group. Two groups of strays becoming one.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Sol talked a group of kids into merging begging territory a few days later, a wary truce that was struck with Sol’s winning smile and careful, pretty words. Their little group moved into a better living space. Four bodies became nine, two omegas in a pile of betas and children not old enough to present yet.</p>
<p>Caecus thought of Sol all the years before when he met him, promising he’d make things better. With the same feeling in his heart as when he got his visions, he knew things would keep changing from here.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“I can’t find a way yet to keep it from happening again,” Sol said on the roof of their new home. He was busier now, but he still did this, still took Caecus somewhere alone to be just the two of them. “I heard that a mating bite and bond can make them less painful though.”</p>
<p>“Just one problem,” Caecus said. “I don’t want to mate.”</p>
<p>“I get that.” Sol rolled over and touched Caecus’s neck, the spot a bite would take. It sent a frisson of <em>something</em> through Caecus that he didn’t have a name for. “I don’t know if you need to actually fuck for it to take or just be in heat, but… I can try for you.”</p>
<p>Caecus blinked and sat up slowly. “Sol?”</p>
<p>“It’s just a bite. I won’t do anything more than you want,” Sol promised.</p>
<p>Sol wanted to be his mate? Even if he never… Caecus felt his heart ache. A nebulous desire and possessiveness that he didn’t usually feel. What was this?</p>
<p>“Why?” Caecus asked. “Someone else could give you more.”</p>
<p>Sol huffed. “I don’t give a crap what you can or can’t give me, I want you to hurt less,” he said. “Besides, it might not even work.” He scowled, but it was directed inward. “I’m just a beta. Maybe it would only work if it was an alpha’s bite.”</p>
<p>Bonds and how they took were strange. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason about why one person could accept one with one person and not another, though they did happen more between alphas and omegas.</p>
<p>“Do you not want to?” Sol asked, vulnerable for a moment.</p>
<p>Caecus didn’t know why he would be. Didn’t he know he was Caecus’s world? Didn’t he see how their whole group looked to him like he was the sun parting the clouds? Caecus flopped over onto him, more tactile for the moment. “Of course I do. If it’s you I am okay with it. I… I want it.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>Sol’s arms wrapped around him, nervous. “Can I…?”</p>
<p>“Hm?”</p>
<p>“Can I kiss you? Just. Just kiss…”</p>
<p>Caecus had never kissed anyone, though Sol had kissed people plenty. It wasn’t any more intimate than what they were already doing. He tilted his head up.</p>
<p>Sol’s lips were rough. He chewed on the edge of his lower lip a lot and neither of them was kind to their bodies. The pressure was strange, but not in a bad way, Caecus supposed. Warm. A bit wet, but it made Sol’s scent swell around him and that was good. It was very good.</p>
<p>Caecus felt Sol bury his nose at Caecus’s scent gland when they parted, breathing him in open-mouthed like he could almost taste him. There was that thread of arousal from him again, but it didn’t bother Caecus like it would in someone else. Sol wasn’t going to do anything about that arousal so long as Caecus was still there.</p>
<p>“What’s this going to mean for Mica’s heats?” Caecus asked after a moment.</p>
<p>Sol pulled back reluctantly. “I dunno. I could keep offering him help, or maybe he’ll want one of the others. Would it bother you if I did even once we bonded? If we can bond?”</p>
<p>“It’s Mica,” Caecus said with a shrug. “And you’re not planning to bond him, are you?”</p>
<p>“No.” Sol held him, tight and possessive, and it didn’t bother Caecus at all. Maybe it was something about being an omega or maybe it was just something he hadn’t known about himself, but he liked that Sol wanted to leave his mark and keep him. He wanted the world to see him and know that he had chosen Sol and Sol chose him back.</p>
<p>“Then it’s fine.” He dared to kiss Sol again, lightly. “I can’t meet your needs, so you can go to others to get what I can’t give.”</p>
<p>He felt Sol’s breath stutter before he was gripped close again. “God. You’re. You’re…”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Caecus said, understanding without words. “I know.”</p>
<p>“We gotta wait til your next heat to bond,” Sol said into Caecus’s collarbone.</p>
<p>It was still something he was dreading. But. “Okay.” His heart felt full. And underneath the warm feeling… He owed Sol a lot. If Caecus could give back… “Sol?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“When I have my fits…”</p>
<p>Sol’s arms loosened so he could look Caecus in the eyes. He’d always met Caecus’s eyes… So many didn’t with their odd pale shade.</p>
<p>“Sometimes,” Caecus said, “I see things. Not…not demons or things like that just.” He’d never tried to explain this before, knowing from a young age that it wasn’t something people would understand. “Visions. Sometimes they make no sense. And sometimes they do, and they’re things that are going to happen. A day or two away at most, but real things.” Sol’s lips turned down in a frown, a crease between his brows and Caecus found himself floundering, scared. “I’m not crazy, I swear. It’s. The sky sometimes triggers them and I don’t know why, but I know it’s not just in my head, Sol. When I was seven I saw a vision of a bird falling with a broken wing. The next day a boy fell out a window and died. When I was nine, I saw my mother unweaving a tapestry in a vision and she went crazy and got rid of me the same week. When I met you…” His breaths came too fast, words spilling over each other. “I saw a vision of the sun coming out from clouds less than a full day before I met you, and you’ve made my life brighter ever since you came in it. Believe me, I’m not lying or insane.”</p>
<p>Sol breathed out slowly before cupping a hand at the back of Caecus’s neck. His thumb brushed the ridge of Caecus’s spine slowly. “There’s a lot of weird things in the world,” he said finally. “I can believe you. But why tell me now?”</p>
<p>“I’m trying to control it. If I can… if I can, maybe I can help you. Maybe you can use what I see and I’ll be useful—”</p>
<p>Sol’s lips cut him off. “You don’t have to be useful to want you around, dumbass. And you rake in more than enough begging or picking the occasional pocket. You do your share.”</p>
<p>“I know but—”</p>
<p>“But I wouldn’t turn down your help.” Sol grinned up at him, crooked teeth and crooked smile with his twice-broken nose and freckles that came from who knew what ancestry. He was a street kid through and through and it was Caecus who would forever feel out of place no matter how much he’d grown into just as ragged a teenager. “If you can do it,” Sol whispered, “we could take on the world. You and me, we could be unstoppable.”</p>
<p>Just like the first time Solitus smiled on him, Caecus felt like he was looking into the sun, too bright and warm for his eyes to bear. “I’ll do it then.”</p>
<p><em>“We’ll</em> do it,” Sol corrected, “together.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Heat burned.</p>
<p>It was the same awful gut cramping pain as before, body slick and aching in strange places, and it was just as physically repulsive as the last time. Only this time, when his heat started, Caecus was in the main room of their home, and eight faces turned his direction. Two of the newer betas covered their noses. Sol grabbed Caecus by the arm and pushed him toward a separate room.</p>
<p>“Looks like I won’t be available for a bit,” he said like it was a normal day and Caecus wasn’t releasing horrible sex hormones everywhere, fogging up the air. “Ocius, you’re in charge for the meantime.”</p>
<p>The previous leader of the other group frowned but Solitus stared him down until he nodded.</p>
<p>“Great. Just a note, anyone touches him that he doesn’t want to, they’ll be missing a piece of themselves shortly after, clear?”</p>
<p>Caecus didn’t see much more than a glimpse of nervous faces before the cloth door covered them up. Cloth wouldn’t block out sounds. Then again, they hadn’t had any door last time. Sol draped cloth over the windows, pitching it dark and blocking scent in some. With a flash of remembrance half-forgotten, Caecus recalled that his mother’s room had been similar, draped in cloth and dim. Hers had been cozy and luxurious, a perfect place to retreat to when the body reached its cycle. This, with a straw mattress and a few blankets, was like a sad reflection of that opulence, but more than he’d had the last time. Caecus curled into a ball on the mattress as Sol took care of details Caecus couldn’t bring himself to care about.</p>
<p>Perhaps worse than how his body felt was how it warped the mind; it was hard to focus on anything much.</p>
<p>Sol touched his cheek, a safe, familiar touch, and Caecus leaned into it. Hungered for the contact. He felt cool against the fire beginning to grow under Caecus’s skin. “Normally,” Sol said softly, “people mate and give a bonding bite at climax. How do you want me to do this?”</p>
<p>He balked at the thought of a real mating; anything below the belt was…wrong, bad, no matter how much slick he might be producing or how he ached. “No sex,” Caecus said.</p>
<p>“I know. I know,” Sol said. “But what can I do? What feels good?”</p>
<p>The question rattled around Caecus’s brain, refusing to stick, but he caught the ‘feels good’. Sol’s touch on his face was good. He could trust him that it wasn’t going to be more invasive no matter how much arousal he smelled of. Last time proved it.</p>
<p>Caecus leaned up on his knees, pushing his face forcefully into Sol’s hand so it slid down his jaw and neck, skittering along his bond point. He shivered. “This feels good,” Caecus said. “You feel good. Smell good.” He breathed in Sol’s scent and felt him take a sharp breath, trembling lightly.</p>
<p>“What do you want?” Sol asked, control reigned tight.</p>
<p>Caecus blinked at him. This was different from last time, his head so much foggier, but maybe it was because they were in a room, it felt safer to relax. “You.”</p>
<p>Sol closed his eyes and took a slow breath. “Caecus, please don’t say that kind of thing when you smell like that. Specific. Please.”</p>
<p>Why—oh, right. That thread of arousal scent grew, and Caecus’s body went slicker even as his mind shied away, a bit more aware than a moment ago. He struggled for words. “Just.” Caecus grabbed Sol’s arm, moving his hand from his shoulder to his face, then down his chest. “Touch. But not lower,” he said, bringing Sol’s hand to a halt at his navel.</p>
<p>“Okay. Great. I’m going to kiss you,” Sol said and that was fine. Nice even. Kissing was good and his heat addled body agreed. It agreed more to the skin contact as Sol ran his hands under Caecus’s clothes. Caecus wanted to lay on top of him and press their bodies together like their skins could meld as one. Just sit, bare chest to chest and scent Sol. Except his gut clenched painfully again, and any contentment from the contact turned to discomfort at the reminder that his body was outside his control.</p>
<p>“Shhh,” Sol said. “I have you.”</p>
<p>Lips on lips. Hands roaming as Caecus touched back, clinging. Weight pressing him down as his body tried to curl up with another wave of pain, soothing away the hurt with soft touches to his abdomen. Caecus struggled against pain and Sol would press him down until an undefined time later, Caecus could only tremble and clutch at Sol’s shoulders as he kept touching and spreading his scent all across Caecus’s skin.</p>
<p>Sol’s aroused scent mingled with Caecus’s heat-scent, but Sol kept his hips firmly away, attention on Caecus’s comfort first.</p>
<p>It was overwhelming. It was too much and not enough at the same time and it was both torture and the most wonderful, intimate feeling Caecus had ever felt.</p>
<p>“Please,” Caecus said, not even sure what he was asking for. “Please.”</p>
<p>Above him, Sol bit his lip. His thumbs brushed the only bit of soft flesh Caecus had, in the dip of his belly. “Shit, Caecus,” he mumbled. He pressed his face to Caecus’s throat, breathing him in. His teeth grazed skin. “Can I…? I want to…”</p>
<p>Caecus tilted his head on instinct, baring neck and shoulder. Above him, Sol gave a full body shiver. His mouth moved lower, tongue trailing against skin and his teeth scraped at the end of it, a last warning and threat.</p>
<p>Caecus whimpered. He held still, submitting, lost in instinctual reactions. Teeth pressed, enough to get a feel, then Sol bit down, hard. Caecus jerked, nails digging into Sol’s arms as his body tried to escape and press into the feeling at the same time. He cried out as Sol drew blood, pain burning from his shoulder and his gut now, and Sol groaned above him, hips moving once, involuntarily.</p>
<p>Caecus froze a second in fear, but that was all that happened, Sol breathing heavily through teeth clenched around Caecus’s flesh and the sharp pain becoming a dull ache as his jaw finally relaxed.</p>
<p>Sol licked blood from his lips.</p>
<p>There was a strange tug in Caecus’s chest as he looked up into Sol’s hazel eyes, blown wide from pheromones and contact. And Sol’s scent smelled like home, his warmth better than any blanket, his skin where they touched like a cool drink on a hot day. Some of the knotting pain in his gut unclenched.</p>
<p>“You okay?” Sol asked, his voice hoarse like he’d been screaming.</p>
<p>Caecus came back to himself as the bond settled. Oh. That was different, a tiny awareness that he wasn’t alone, a little tug in his chest toward Sol at all times. It wasn’t a bad feeling.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Caecus said, because pain aside, what he was feeling now was a <em>good</em> feeling and he wanted that to last.</p>
<p>“I’m glad.” Sol pressed their foreheads together. Caecus never wanted to move again.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Of course it didn’t stay that way. The bond helped, but heat was heat, and soon enough Caecus’s body was twisting itself up again. This time Sol’s touch made it bearable, helped him keep his mind enough to remember to eat and drink and soothed him to sleep.</p>
<p>Heat was still horrible but it was better this time than the first time.</p>
<p>When it was all over and Sol was passed out, having had to back off several times to relieve himself from hormone-induced arousal, Caecus touched the sore, ragged mark on his neck and wondered how someone as unlucky as him got someone like Sol in his life. Maybe Sol was all his good luck rolled into one person and the visions were all the manifestations of his bad luck.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Time passed. Solitus’s group grew, person by person, and they started to get more daring. Caecus, for his part, started to try to get his visions to happen by his own will. Sometimes he could guess what they meant, and other times, he ended up curled up with Sol, talking through them as they tried to piece them together, bit by bit.</p>
<p>If he was alone, Caecus knew he never would have looked deeper at the greatest disruptor of his life. He’d have lived plagued by visions and probably died from one ill-timed fainting spell as his power took him. But with Sol? With the bond warm between their hearts? Caecus felt confidence growing at each successful vision. At each smile Sol gave him and whispered words of how they would succeed together.</p>
<p>With Solitus believing in him, he felt like he could do anything.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>A heat was coming. At sixteen, Caecus had gone through enough of them that he knew what the onset felt like. Some omegas slept more, or got ravenous. Caecus felt like there was an itch under his skin, like he needed to claw himself open or maybe go for a long run, like exhaustion could burn away the feeling. The room was loud, a celebration of successfully taking a chunk of territory away from one of the other gangs. The air was full of candle smoke, too many bodies, and far too much wine. Caecus debated whether he’d stayed long enough; his vision had helped point Sol to a weak point in the other gang’s chain of command, but it was everyone else that did the hard work. He had his blindfold on, as usual. It was always on these days unless he was trying to See or it was just him and Sol. Rather than making the room feel larger though, all the lack of sight did was impress upon him the overlapping scents and how loud everyone was being. Paired with the prickly feeling under his skin, Caecus wanted nothing more than to find Sol in the crowd and drag them off to their room to unwind from the long day.</p>
<p>He wouldn’t though. Celebrations like this were important, forging bonds and such. A leader had to be present. Caecus, however, did not. As wine sloshed from someone’s cup not far from him, he decided it was time to call it a night.</p>
<p>Caecus barely made it three steps before a stranger’s hand caught his wrist. “Not staying? It’s time to be having fun!”</p>
<p>Alcohol scented breath wafted into Caecus’s nose along with the bitter scent of some unknown alpha. He must be one of the recent recruits because Caecus tried to keep track of the scents around him. “I’m done for the night,” Caecus said, firm as he tugged on his wrist.</p>
<p>The alpha, clearly much larger from his hand size alone, tugged right back, and Caecus staggered into his chest. “You smell nice. Care to have a bit of fun with me?”</p>
<p>This was not the first time an alpha hit on him, nor the second or third, but each and every time it happened, Caecus’s skin crawled.  Most respected the mating bite on his neck. Clearly this alpha wasn’t so perceptive nor so respectable.</p>
<p>Caecus bared his teeth. “I said I’m done—”</p>
<p>A rough hand on his chin and an invasive kiss cut off his words and Caecus twisted away.</p>
<p>“C’mon, meet me halfway, smelling like that…”</p>
<p>There was a knife at Caecus’s waist that he rarely used but his free hand gripped the hilt. He didn’t want to stab anyone but he damn well would if this man didn’t get his hands <em>off</em>.</p>
<p>“I’m mated, now back off or you’re going to regret it,” Caecus said between gritted teeth.</p>
<p>“Mm, boss’s omega whore,” the man said, and Caecus felt cold because the man knew and was still pushing himself on him. “But you’ve never been with an alpha have you?” Hand over his bond mark, the one around his wrist pressing it up towards his chest, no leverage— “Have a heat with a real man and you’ll know what you’re missin—” The man cut off just as Caecus started to slide his knife free.</p>
<p>Caecus froze at the change, but then Sol’s scent caught his nose and the sudden pocket of silence around them.</p>
<p>“You,” Sol said, voice sharp as a knife, “are going to regret that.”</p>
<p>“Boss,” the alpha said shakily. The alcohol was heavy on his breath still and Caecus just wanted to leave.</p>
<p>“Let go,” Sol said, still scarily calm. “And step away.”</p>
<p>“I—”</p>
<p>“Let me rephrase that—step away or you’re going to lose more than a few bits of your body tonight.”</p>
<p>The hand let go. The overbearing presence and faint bodily heat went with it as the alpha took an unsteady step back. Silence, then a footstep and screaming, blood sharp in the air.</p>
<p>Sol’s familiar hand, speckled with dampness touched the unmarked side of Caecus’s neck as he slid up behind him. “Let that be a lesson not to touch what isn’t yours,” he growled at the man screaming on the ground.</p>
<p>The party had all but stopped, and there was shuffling and frantic whispers as someone dragged the now-whimpering man away. Caecus shivered.</p>
<p>“Well,” Solitus said, heavy presence commanding as any alpha. “Now that that’s dealt with, keep having fun. Tomorrow we have work to do, but tonight, I’m going to have a bit of celebration of my own.” He sounded light, but there was a threat under those words, blood-scent on him and danger in the air. When he tugged on Caecus’s shoulder, Caecus followed, leaving the crowded lower floor behind.</p>
<p>Sol led them to their room, tiny, but theirs alone. As soon as they were inside, he tugged Caecus’s blindfold free and started patting him down for injuries.</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” Caecus protested, blinking in the dim light. Sol had blood streaked up one arm, his dagger probably still dirty. There were flecks of red along his elbow and fingertips, some probably rubbed off on Caecus’s own skin. “He didn’t do any damage.” Well, other than a slightly bruised wrist, which was hardly the worst injury Caecus had faced.</p>
<p>Sol frowned. “He shouldn’t have touched you.”</p>
<p>“…What did you do to him?”</p>
<p>“Alphas always think with their pants,” Sol scoffed, running hands over Caecus’s skin to press away the scent of the alpha. “So I figured he might be a bit more clearheaded without those bits.”</p>
<p>“You didn’t.”</p>
<p>There was a vicious streak in Sol’s grin as he rubbed their cheeks together. “I’d have gagged him with them too, but I’d rather not touch them.”</p>
<p>“Sol.”</p>
<p>“Caecus,” Sol parroted back. “Now they know not to touch you.”</p>
<p>“Fear isn’t the way to run everything.” Caecus wasn’t even sure why he was protesting, but it was a little scary to see Sol look so blood thirsty, even on Caecus’s account.</p>
<p>“No, but it’s needed every now and again.” He kissed Caecus on the forehead, strangely gentle compared to everything else that night.</p>
<p>Caecus shivered. All the touch made him tingle pleasantly, pushing back the itch inside him.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The heat was bad, Caecus a mess even with Sol’s scent and touch. It burned through him and left him wrung out and feverish even after he’d been released from its grip. Sol brushed sweaty, tangled hair from his face, almost as exhausted as Caecus was, though it was from keeping control the whole time. Caecus didn’t know how he could keep having patience time and again. Two years of this and he still treated him so gently.</p>
<p>Sol’s fingers touched dried tear tracks on Caecus’s face from when the pain had been overwhelming. “I wish I could make this easier,” he said.</p>
<p>Caecus pressed his nose against Sol’s pulse point, where his scent was stronger. “You’ve done what you can. Unless there’s some way to get rid of heats altogether, then this is as good as it’s going to get.” A lifetime of this looked… daunting to say the least. Caecus thought he’d manage so long as Sol was in it though.</p>
<p>“Hmm,” Sol hummed, noncommittal. He was always trying to fix problems. Caecus’s or other smaller ones in their group. Making them stronger, a better unit. He couldn’t control nature though.</p>
<p>There was a knock on the door. Three quick raps that only Mica used. “Solitus?” Mica said from outside. “If you two aren’t currently… occupied… there’s a bit of a dispute that Ocius can’t handle.”</p>
<p>Sol hesitated and Caecus propped himself up on his forearms. “I’ll be fine now,” Caecus said. “You’ve spent enough time. They need their leader back.”</p>
<p>“Only three days,” Sol said. “You’ve got the shortest heats of anyone here.”</p>
<p>That was luck; just a lot of pain, all condensed instead of drawn out. “Go,” Caecus said, giving him a bit of a shove.</p>
<p>Sol groaned and rolled to his feet, fixing his clothing. That didn’t take much; it wasn’t as if they did much that could be considered indecent, regardless of the heat. “Fine.” He opened the door to Mica. “He’s done with the worst of the heat, so I guess I’m not needed here.”</p>
<p>“Oh you’re always needed everywhere,” Caecus said, unwilling to move from the nest of blankets on the floor.</p>
<p>Sol snorted. “Sure.” He left and Mica stayed behind, hesitating in the doorway.</p>
<p>Caecus blinked slowly in his direction. The mating bite from Mica’s last heat was still red on his neck. So far he’d seemed happy enough with his alpha mate, less worried about being snatched away to a brothel at any rate. “Come in?” Caecus offered.</p>
<p>Musca did. “Are you really feeling better now? It… it sounded like a bad one.” He didn’t get to close to the blanket nest, probably worried Caecus would feel territorial.</p>
<p>With someone else, maybe Caecus would, but Mica was both an omega and someone he’d known for years now. He didn’t feel self-conscious as he sat up and tried to put a bit of effort into looking more put together. His hair was a mass of tangles. Caecus scrunched his nose at it, wavy black hair all over. It was getting irritatingly long too. “I’m fine.”</p>
<p>He caught Mica studying him, and so he studied back. It had been a while since he had truly seen someone other than Sol for more than brief flashes or in visions.</p>
<p>“I always forget your eyes are like that,” Mica commented, inching closer. “When the light isn’t good, it looks like you don’t have any color to them at all.”</p>
<p>Caecus shrugged. They were gray once, he remembered, but that had changed. Mica had grown taller. The steadier supply of food and an actual roof over his head was doing wonders. And the mark… “Are you happy with your mating bond?” Caecus asked.</p>
<p>Mica touched the mark self-consciously. “I don’t mind it. My mate treats me well.”</p>
<p>“Do you love him?”</p>
<p>Mica shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I think I could grow to love him. Do you love Solitus?”</p>
<p>A brazen question if it had come from anyone else. But it was Mica and he likely knew the answer already. Everyone had to know; Sol was blatant with his favoritism.</p>
<p>“Of course I do,” Caecus said.</p>
<p>“Even if you’re not proper mates?” Mica asked.</p>
<p>Despite the room filled with hormones, it was easy to tell that no sex had actually taken place.</p>
<p>“You don’t need to fuck to love, Mica,” Caecus said. He stretched and his back cracked. It also made the part inside of him that ached twinge uncomfortably. He winced and curled back into himself. “Sol’s always been the one for me, you know?”</p>
<p>Mica smiled, somehow a little sad. But then he’d slept with Sol more than once before he took a mate. Maybe he’d loved him a bit too. “I know. You’ve always looked at him like he makes the sun rise. And he always gravitates back to you no matter what else catches his attention.” He shook his head. “I was going to ask if you needed anything. Water, food?”</p>
<p>Caecus considered. He’d reached the point where he ached everywhere and he just wanted to be close to his bond mate. But that wasn’t happening at the moment. He supposed he didn’t want to be alone either though. “Take a nap with me?” They’d curled up with the others enough times that it wasn’t strange.</p>
<p>Mica hesitated a second before nodding. Their limbs brushed together as Mica joined him in the blankets, his omega scent not as soothing as Sol’s but calming enough that Caecus’s eyes dipped closed in a matter of minutes.  Mica brushed the same tear tracks Sol touched minutes earlier and sighed.</p>
<p>“Sleep,” Mica said. “You won’t be alone.”</p>
<p>“Thanks.” The ache would linger for days, but he’d take comfort where he could.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“I’ve been asking around,” Sol said, alone together and not in their room for once. Caecus had only seen him when he came to bed lately. He looked tired, hair a mess and stress lines forming around his eyes. It was hard to keep one step ahead of guards and rivals alike.</p>
<p>Caecus shouldn’t be out here without his blindfold on, not by the river and open sky where he could get snatched into a vision, but it was impossible to say no to Solitus when he asked to see his eyes.</p>
<p>“Asked for what?” Caecus said, fiddling with a bit of dry grass.</p>
<p>“Medicines for omegas. Things that stave off heats.” When Caecus looked at him sharply, he held hands up. “I said I’d try. There’s… not a lot. There’s some herbs that can push a heat back, and some that induce it, but there wasn’t a lot I could find on stopping heats.”</p>
<p>“But… staving it off is possible, correct?”</p>
<p>Sol ran a hand through his hair. “I was given something by a woman… She said it had stopped her heats, but that it was dangerous. I… I don’t know, Caecus, you could try it, but there’s nothing guaranteed.”</p>
<p>“Dangerous how?”</p>
<p>“Sterility, messing up your cycles if it doesn’t stop them, I think. She dodged details and most of the other herbalists didn’t sound too thrilled about it. The dosage is… really variable and hard to get right.”</p>
<p>Caecus weighed that. The possibility that he might be harmed. He was already sterile, that wasn’t a problem. Affecting his cycles, well, that was technically what it was doing anyway. Maybe they’d come less often if he tried. Not gone all the way, but… less. He really wanted them to be less. “If you get the dosage wrong…”</p>
<p>“Well,” Sol said, looking unhappy, “a lot of medicine is really just poison in tiny amounts. And this is technically poison.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Poison was… hmm. “Fatal poison?”</p>
<p>“Poison-poison,” Sol said unhelpfully. “If it doesn’t kill you, you might wish it did I don’t know. I… I almost decided not to mention it at all. But I promised you.”</p>
<p>There was that care again, the care that left Caecus warm inside. Sol truly was worried over this, but he wanted to make Caecus happy. “I’ll try it. As low a dose as might be effective.”</p>
<p>“Caecus…”</p>
<p>“It might work,” Caecus pointed out. “If it doesn’t, well…”</p>
<p>“Don’t even joke.” Still, Sol reached into his belt pouch for the medicine. It was a fine-ground powder. “The woman used two pinches.” He looked Caecus over. “You’re scrawny as hell so only one seems about right.”</p>
<p>‘About right’ wasn’t exactly precise, but there was no getting anywhere in life without some risk. If they hadn’t taken chances, they would all still be back in the old gang. Or more, Caecus would have been sold into prostitution long ago and Sol might not even be alive considering his ambitious nature.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to decide now,” Sol said, pulling his arm back.</p>
<p>Caecus stopped him, letting his hand linger on Sol’s wrist. The play of sunlight on the back of his scarred hands was something Caecus didn’t get to see enough. “No. I might as well try it now. What better time will there be when we’re alone together for more than a bit?” Things were busier now and Caecus didn’t begrudge Sol that. He might have some if he hadn’t had visions to contribute, but they both had their roles to fill, and that was enough. “Hand it over.”</p>
<p>Sol gave him the medicine reluctantly. “Just. I’m not confident about this one. The other one, yeah, that’s used in all the whorehouses from here to Brittany, but…”</p>
<p>“I want to believe there’s a way,” Caecus said because it was as simple as that. He steeled his will and took a pinch. It tasted bitter on his tongue and a bit metallic, and Caecus swallowed convulsively, trying to rid himself of the taste. It was less than a minute later that his gut clenched and his heart started to beat harder and the world spun with each increasingly laborious breath. Perhaps, Caecus thought, clutching at his chest as his vision blurred, he should have been more cautious.</p>
<p>The last thing he saw before pain and unconsciousness ripped his mind from him was Sol’s terrified, pale face and hands reaching for him.</p>
<p>**</p>
<p>When consciousness finally came back, it was in fits and starts. The blur of a tree branch as his eyes fluttered. The weight of air that felt like his lungs clawed each gasp. His heartbeat through his extremities and the disgusting feeling of having soiled himself. Caecus tried to move, failed, head lolling to the side. His eyes tried to focus on the brown blur there, and it finally resolved itself into Sol, Sol holding his hand and his lips moving, eyes squeezed shut and tears all over his face.</p>
<p>“Please, please keep breathing,” Sol said, voice finally reaching Caecus’s ears. “Please. Don’t die, don’t die.” He could have been saying this for minutes or hours.</p>
<p>Everything hurt. Why did it hurt? The world went dark. The world went light.</p>
<p>Caecus took another painful breath. And another. And another. His eyes still weren’t seeing right. His lips felt numb. That was okay though. It wasn’t pain.</p>
<p>There was sobbing beside him. Sol’s scent tickled his nose. Grief and fear and pain—his or Sol’s? “Sss,” Caecus tried.</p>
<p>Frantic hands pawed at his face and the world spun to be replaced with Sol’s crooked nose and bloodshot brown eyes. “You’re alive? Please, god, be alive.”</p>
<p>“Mmn.” His tongue wasn’t working. It was terrifying in a distant, half-there way. Less terrifying and more like he knew it should scare him, but couldn’t quite reach that emotion. Caecus tried to lift a hand and it flopped awkwardly on his chest instead.</p>
<p>“Ssshhh,” Sol grabbed his hand, holding him still. “Don’t. Don’t move I don’t. You’re going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it. You’re going to be okay.”</p>
<p>Caecus blinked at him as he blurred and shifted, blue and brown and tan.</p>
<p>“Trust me. I promise you will be okay. I won’t let it be otherwise.”</p>
<p>Silly. Caecus hurt but he wasn’t scared. Sol was there. He would trust Sol with anything. If Sol said it would be okay, it would be okay. Caecus’s eyes slid closed again. Breathing hurt. He kept breathing though. Sol told him to.</p>
<p>The world went disjointed. Before he surrendered to the unconsciousness his body wanted, he looked up at the sky. And the world vanished, leaving him in the misty ruins among the clouds. He breathed in bitter orange and wet stone, green citrus bite and damp decomposition.</p>
<p>Everything was distant here. Caecus leaned against a worn stone wall and breathed.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Heats were worse after that. Dry and painful no matter how much Caecus inhaled Sol’s scent or pressed into his touch. The worst part, worse than the days of pain, was how Sol’s scent soured with guilt, and the way he seemed determined to keep Caecus home more often, like he was worried Caecus would break.</p>
<p>In all honesty, the drug should have killed him. Caecus still wasn’t sure how it didn’t. According to Sol, he’d stopped breathing at one point, only to start up again almost a full minute later and some frantic shaking aside. His eyes didn’t always work the same now, and for weeks after, he’d have moments where he couldn’t breathe right and Sol would shove him into their bedroom and make him sit for hours until the spell passed.</p>
<p>Caecus hated the fear in Sol’s eyes.</p>
<p>There were no more attempts at finding a way to suppress his heats, and Caecus couldn’t blame Sol for giving up. On days when the guilt was bad, Sol threw himself into work, picking more fights and taking territory with more aggression. Their group was still flourishing, but there was a strain between them now that Caecus wished he could wave away. If he were a normal person, one who could distract in bodily ways, maybe he could have pulled Sol from it. But Caecus was Caecus and so he sought more visions and held Sol tight when they slept, kissing him like he could press his existence into Sol and make him believe that he would be okay.</p>
<p>“It used to be different,” Caecus said to Mica, the only one still around of their original group, sometime in the autumn of his seventeenth year. “Sometimes I’m not sure he sees me or if he’s seeing me dying. I’m managing fine now. But I miss how he used to be.” He missed the Sol that pressed a knife in his hands and showed him how to use it, the Sol that taught him to fleece a man with a beggar’s wiles and pick his pocket when his guard was down. He missed rooftop nights under the stars and making stupid jokes and times when Sol didn’t alternatively avoid touching him or cling to him like his life depended on it.</p>
<p>“He’s scared,” Mica said, slicing vegetables for the evening meal. “He isn’t an alpha, but you’re his bond mate and an omega. There’s an instinct to protect that. He’ll move past it eventually.”</p>
<p>“I hate it,” Caecus said.</p>
<p>Mica leaned companionably against his shoulder before turning back to his work. “You might want to come out more often, you know. You’re gaining a reputation as being nothing but the boss’s toy staying up there like that.”</p>
<p>“Sol wants me to stay resting,” Caecus sighed. And Caecus was having a lot of visions lately. He was almost sure he was gaining a hand on triggering them purposefully. Not that anyone could know about that. He rubbed his eyes over the blindfold.  Without it everything was a bit blurry and too many moving things made him feel dizzy to watch.</p>
<p>“Since when,” Mica said with a tilt to his head, “were you an obedient little omega?”</p>
<p>Caecus snorted, but he didn’t really have an answer there. He didn’t know how he’d gotten to this point in his life at all.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The vision of Sol’s death came with too short a warning to do anything about it, barely an hour before it happened, a run in with guards. Caecus watched, the vision-world in sharp clarity that reality no longer held, as a sun-bright bird fell from the sky. It flew too high so it was struck down, and with it went Caecus’s heart.</p>
<p>He woke crying, feeling the bond die, Sol’s name on his tongue.</p>
<p>Sol’s body, when they brought him back, was broken and bloodied, too pale and washed out. His eyes were glassy and his crooked teeth bared in a snarl, marred by where a spear had cut through his neck and jaw.</p>
<p>There was an odd sort of silence as Caecus fell to his knees at Sol’s side, broken inside. But then maybe the silence was all in his head because it felt empty now.</p>
<p>There was no Sol, no crooked smile and rough hands warm on his face. There would be no more rooftops at midnight or sleeping in a pile until the sun was high. No more kisses to his forehead or thumb along his bond mark. No more pulling Sol into bed so he would stop scheming and sleep.</p>
<p>The already blurry room went blurrier until tears blinded Caecus’s eyes. He pulled one of Sol’s stiffening wrists to his nose because he couldn’t even scent his throat because it’d been torn out. Sol didn’t even smell right, his body tainted with last moment pain and fear, and his scent wrong without the flow of blood beneath his skin.</p>
<p>He could have been there hours or maybe even days when someone took the body away from him and Caecus almost attacked them for it, hand going to his dagger and a wild, desperate snarl in his throat. But there was Mica’s hand on his stopping him and so many cold eyes looking at him.</p>
<p>Caecus realized that there were a lot of people he didn’t know here. People that he would have kept track of once upon a time, but hadn’t the more he’d spent in his room. Faces and scents of strangers, some who looked at him with pity, and others who looked at him with the sort of hunger that he’d learned to be wary of.</p>
<p>Mica tugged until Caecus staggered away, kept pulling until they were alone again in a small room. It smelled like Mica here, and his alpha, with the occasional scent of other omegas clinging to spaces in the room. Caecus struggled to just keep breathing as Mica pulled him down onto his sleep mat.</p>
<p>“Caecus,” Mica said, hesitantly.</p>
<p>“He’s dead and I let him die,” Caecus said. “I wasn’t there.”</p>
<p>And he hadn’t been there physically on missions in so long. And it didn’t matter that Caecus had never been great for watching backs; it was Sol and he’d failed him. He’d failed to see the risk in time and he’d failed to be there when it mattered most. Sol had never failed to be what Caecus needed.</p>
<p>“No, Caecus, no.” Mica touched his shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done.”</p>
<p>“I could have.” He did. If Sol had left an hour later. If he had. If Caecus had just… His heart ached, a jagged missing piece in his chest.</p>
<p>Mica wiped away tears. His bottom lip was caught in his teeth, worry in his eyes. “Caecus, I know you don’t want to think of this, but Sol isn’t here now, and leadership is changing hands. They don’t know you well and you’re not going to have the same position with a new leader as you did with Solitus.”</p>
<p>No, there would never be anyone like Solitus again, Caecus thought. Nothing would fill that ache.</p>
<p>“You’re still an omega, Caecus,” Mica said with a gentle voice and gentle touch. “Ocius isn’t cruel but… There’s going to be someone who’s going to want to take advantage of that fact, if not Ocius, then someone else. What are you going to do?”</p>
<p>Do? Caecus gave him a blank look. He hadn’t used his practical skillset in most of a year. Could he even pick a pocket anymore? Could he even, with how many visions he’d had in recent months, walk down the street with his face bare without the first glimpse of the sky stealing his mind away? He’d never had the practical skills Mica had either, the ones people valued in an omega. He couldn’t cook well and his sewing was only just functional. He didn’t have a trade; his career as a potter had died almost as soon as it began at the age of eleven.</p>
<p>“I don’t…”</p>
<p>“There’s…” Mica bit his lip hard. “Some people have said that Sol had as much luck as he did because you were in his bed. Like you’re an object. I. There’s going to be conflict, but I think Ocius will come out on top, but if he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, Caecus…”</p>
<p>He didn’t need to say more. Caecus knew that there were plenty of people in the world that didn’t share Sol’s attitude toward omegas, let alone the sort of omega Caecus was.</p>
<p>“Do you think they’ll try to sell me to a whore house?” Caecus asked, barely audible, as his old nightmare re-opened as a possibility.</p>
<p>Mica shrugged helplessly. He had an alpha. He was all but married and no one would contest that. No one contested Sol’s claim even though he was a beta, but a lone omega was anyone’s game. Omegas never belonged to themselves.</p>
<p>“What should I do?” He hadn’t been so alone in years. Not since Sol pulled him into his orbit and took care of him. “Mica, I’ve had dry heats for the last year, I can’t…” He shook his head and Mica winced with sympathy. “Even a whore house wouldn’t want me with that.” Because a dry heat defeated the whole point of being an omega. And while there was someone somewhere who would be interested in the way his scent twisted with pain instead of pleasure, that wasn’t the sort of thing that drew in customers. His future flashed before him, tossed between alphas before being found lacking, then sold and tossed aside from there as his heats proved to be broken and irregular. He’d be back on the street again, shattered, and whatever would be left of him wouldn’t be worth living with long. He’d probably just let himself die in a ditch.</p>
<p>“Shh,” Mica said, and Caecus realized he was breathing too fast. “Shh. You could find another to bond with…”</p>
<p>“I can’t.” His very being ached at the thought, repulsed at the thought of forging another bond over the jagged mess that was all that was left of what he’d had with Sol.</p>
<p>“Then you could run,” Mica said finally, clearly unhappy at the thought. “You could run and try to find a new life.”</p>
<p>Was that really better? He’d end up on the street one way or another and have nothing to fall back on. He’d have no shelter or relief for heats, nothing to stop people trying to claim him just because. But then it wouldn’t be a power struggle and scheming people here. It wouldn’t be people he once relied on selling him. It would be left to chance. Was that better or worse?</p>
<p>“There’s…” Mica left him a moment to dig through a drawer. “This.” Herbs pressed in his hands, full of a pungent yet oddly absent scent at the same time. “That can cover up how you smell. It’s not forever, and it can’t block a heat, but it’d help.”</p>
<p>Why did Mica have these? How long had he had them? There was something wistful in Mica’s eyes and Caecus remembered their talk a long time ago when Mica bonded, how he’d been indifferent toward it, a necessary evil in the world they lived in rather than a source of joy or contentment like it should have been.</p>
<p>Maybe once upon a time Mica had dreamed of running away from it all. Somewhere along the way he’d given that hope up though.</p>
<p>“I can keep them distracted long enough for you to go. I have enough friends to pull strings for a bit of chaos.”</p>
<p>“Mica…”</p>
<p>Mica smiled sadly. “I had a feeling this was coming, you know? There’s only so high people like us can climb and Sol… Sol’s a bit like that story of Icarus. Go too high and you’ll only fall.”</p>
<p>Sol didn’t fly too close to the sun. Sol <em>was</em> the sun in Caecus’s life.</p>
<p>Mica took a breath and hesitated. “Can I …?”</p>
<p>“Can you what?”</p>
<p>“Can I scent you?”</p>
<p>They’d slept curled up beside each other. They’d curled up after heats and known each other for years but there were lines that Caecus hadn’t even noticed were there that Mica respected. It was only ever Sol that Caecus curled up around, scenting each other until they smelled like each other. It always felt a bit too intimate to do with someone else.</p>
<p>Mica looked away. “I know. I know I’m not him and I know it’s not really the time, but I might never see you again and I…”</p>
<p>“Okay.”</p>
<p>Caecus didn’t know how to feel about it as Mica pressed close, breathing against Caecus’s neck a bit too close to his bond mark for it to be comfortable. His hands pressed and stroked like Sol’s did every time he came home or before he left for the day. Mica’s spice scent curled with Caecus’s own and Caecus carefully, hesitantly breathed in Mica’s scent back. There was something desperate there in his smell. Sad and wanting something Caecus didn’t share. Caecus probably smelled like despair and pain and grief, but Mica didn’t pull away for a long time.</p>
<p>“I thought,” Caecus said when he finally scooted back, “that you were content with your bond.”</p>
<p>Mica smiled, bittersweet. “Caecus, the only time I want an alpha is when I’m in heat.”</p>
<p>The other omega scents in the room made much more sense all of a sudden.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Mica said, “for letting me have that.”</p>
<p>It didn’t feel right to respond to that. Nothing Caecus could say would come out as anything but awkward. Mica pulled a few things out of his bundles of belongings and pressed them into Caecus’s hands. A blanket. A clean tunic. Bread, not yet stale, and a small pouch of coins. On top of it all was one of Caecus’s blindfolds. Mica’d been planning this. He must have seen where things were going long before Caecus did.</p>
<p>“Take it. Go. Stay safe.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.” There was nothing Caecus could do to repay this. He didn’t want to leave the last friend he had either and his heart ached in a different way. How many ways could he hurt, without Sol here?</p>
<p>Mica helped him bundle his things together and tied the blindfold over Caecus’s eyes. He’d looked at them one last time first, one of the only people who would meet his eyes. Caecus told himself he’d never take the blindfold off again. What did he need to see for? The visions hadn’t helped when he needed them most in the end.</p>
<p>When it was night, Caecus slipped out the back, using rusty skills and half-remembered mental maps to take himself further and further away. If he ached inside more with every step no one saw it. No one, he thought, would ever get close to him that way again. There was only one sun in the sky and now that it’d set, Caecus wouldn’t look for it to rise again.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Begging was harder than he remembered. But then he was almost an adult now, not a scrawny, pity-worthy child. If it wasn’t for the church bread line, he’d probably have starved to death in the first month on the streets. Caecus slept in gutters and fled at the slightest sign that anyone in the area might try to drive him out. There were other beggars but he didn’t talk to them, just made note of their scents and tried not to cut too much into their profits.</p>
<p>Eating three-day-old bread in a dingy alley that smelled like rotting vegetables and piss, Caecus wondered why he was even bothering staying alive. There wasn’t anything to live for anymore.</p>
<p>But then he’d remember the bittersweet smile on Mica’s face, or the way Sol used to point out that street kids lived to spite the world, and if there was nothing else to live for spite was something. So he ate his bread and ate cheap, mystery soup sold by dodgy street carts near the cattle market or meat that might have been rats from a woman that didn’t charge too much, and somehow kept living another day. Another day. Another day.</p>
<p>It wasn’t pleasant, but it was life.</p>
<p>And then one day Caecus woke up with his skin itching and restless energy in his veins and the heavy realization he was going to go into heat any day now.</p>
<p>He almost walked out in front of a cart on purpose that day. A painful death under horse hooves and cart wheels was almost more appealing than the agony he knew was coming. His heats might be short, but they had always been painful. He didn’t even want to know how it would be without Sol’s comfort.</p>
<p>By the second day, he could feel the sweat growing on his body, the shift in his scent as Mica’s herbs couldn’t cover it up anymore. Caecus walked south, toward the tanneries and the docks, places that smelled so bad that maybe they’d cover it up and he could find some hole to crawl in and think about dying until this was all over.</p>
<p>He made it to the tannery district, but the world got a lot less clear after that, sounds and scents blurring as need started to take over. His gut cramped and a wave of pain had him stopping, panting with his head against rough stone.</p>
<p>Caecus didn’t know where he went after that. He didn’t have much sense of direction and what little he did have was lost as he stopped counting steps and listening for changes in his surroundings. Caecus kept moving until he couldn’t anymore, tripping down stairs to somewhere cooler and wet-smelling. The pain of the fall mingled with the pain from his heat and Caecus gave up, curling into a miserable ball.</p>
<p>If someone found him there, there was nothing he could do about it. He gave in to the pain.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The agony’s monotony slipped with a cold hand on his face and a bitter, aging omega scent in his nose. Unwashed, unhealthy, female, but the touch was gentle not cruel and the part of him that needed turned into it like a sunflower toward the light. She wasn’t Sol, she wasn’t anyone he knew, but she wasn’t an alpha and probably wasn’t going to try to claim him or mate him so that was enough to let wary walls down enough to seek comfort.</p>
<p>“Shit, kid,” a rusty, hoarse voice said. “What are you even doing here?”</p>
<p>Caecus whined in his throat, words beyond him.</p>
<p>“Shh.” Gentle hands smoothing back his sweaty-sticky hair. “Hell of a place to go into heat. Got a bite, so where’s your mate?” She rolled him on his side, tugging until Caecus crawled further into the cool, damp space. There was someone else here, beta and just as old. He didn’t smell like a threat.</p>
<p>Another wave of pain rolled through him. Caecus curled in on himself again. “Hurts,” he whined. He wanted Sol. He wanted his nest of blankets and the safe room he used to have. He had cold cobblestones and a strange omega rubbing his back instead.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I can see that, kid. Don’t got the right equipment to help you there. Jacor ain’t got it up in almost a decade so don’t expect anything there. Could find someone if you want.”</p>
<p>Caecus flinched. The terrified whine that ripped from his throat would have been mortifying in any other situation.</p>
<p>“Or not,” the woman said. “Fuck, you even coherent in there? You got an alpha, kid?”</p>
<p>Words jumbled on his tongue. He tried, but all that he could force out was a miserable sounding, “No.”</p>
<p>“Beta then? Omega? I don’t judge.”</p>
<p>“Dead.” Caecus was a little horrified that he started crying when the slow touch on his back paused before going even gentler.</p>
<p>“Shit, kid.” An arm around him that should have made his skin crawl but it didn’t. It didn’t. He wanted to be held so much right now. “Well I’ve got you. Can’t fuck you, but I can hold you through it. Sucks enough without having it alone.”</p>
<p>Caecus couldn’t say that that was all he wanted or needed, couldn’t do anything more than give a broken sob and press into the comfort, twisting when the pain got too much but never pulling away. He might just die if he lost this unexpectedly kind touch.</p>
<p>Voices talked over him, two old and gnarled sounds, rough with the wear of life, but their meaning was lost to the ache inside Caecus and the exhaustion that finally took him when his body let him snatch a few hours of slightly less agonizing sleep.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>His first heat without Sol was a blur. Caecus wasn’t sure how much was the grief  and how much was his broken body, but the only snippets of coherence that made it through three days of agony were the occasional cold, wet hand on his face, or brief flashes of washed out omega scent that didn’t comfort the same way Sol’s did. When he came out of it, he felt like he’d been beaten within an inch of his life and then hung out to dry, dehydration warring with muscle fatigue. He woke up under his own blanket, surprisingly with his clothing still on and, so far as he could tell in a slow, clumsy fumble, all his possessions, what little they were. Even his blindfold was in place. There was someone nearby; he could hear the soft scrape of a knife against something, but when he tried to move his head to hear better, his entire body protested the motion. Caecus groaned softly. The scrape of the knife paused.</p>
<p>“Delere,” a raspy male voice said.</p>
<p>A grumble came from near the first voice and the sound of a hand swatting something.</p>
<p>“Kid’s awake.”</p>
<p>“Ugh. Jacor, I just got asleep.”</p>
<p>Jacor, Caecus presumed, snorted and went back to using his knife.</p>
<p>A body shifted and moved closer, a dragging noise like they were shuffling on hands and knees. Caecus twitched when a hand unstuck sweaty hair from his forehead. “Feeling better kiddo?”</p>
<p>“Mm.” Caecus tried to speak, but his throat felt raw and dry.</p>
<p>“Jacor, water?” More scuffing and then the hands tilting him up so he could drink from a bowl, rough and chipped. The water was warm and tasted like it had been sitting for a while, but he swallowed it eagerly. It soothed the burn enough to try to speak again.</p>
<p>“Where am I and who are you?” he asked. He sounded like he’d been screaming. He probably had been at some point.</p>
<p>“Could ask you the same, kid,” the woman said. “You can call me Delere though. There’s just me and Jacor here. As for where…” She snorted. “You’re in our squat. Under a bridge by the river. You scared the shit out of us when you fell down the stairs the other day.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>“Got a name?”</p>
<p>“…Caecus.”</p>
<p>“That the name you were born with?” she asked humorously.</p>
<p>In spite of himself, Caecus managed a small smile. “No.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough. Not the name Jacor was born with either.” She offered him another sip of water and he drank it a bit less desperately. “How’d you end up in heat on the streets?”</p>
<p>Caecus turned his face away. “I’ve been homeless for a while.”</p>
<p>“And you said the one that gave you this was dead.”</p>
<p>He flinched as she brushed against the old scar on his neck and probably would have lashed out if he had any energy to do so. Instead he kind of flopped a bit, falling back down as he wormed out of her supporting hand.</p>
<p>“Yeah, you didn’t like it when I touched there when you were in heat either. Funny cuz normally that helps.”</p>
<p>“I don’t like being touched much when I’m in heat.”</p>
<p>“Noticed that too,” she said. “Kind of hard to help if you don’t give your body what it wants.”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t want anything. Or did you miss the fact that it’s a dry heat?” He coughed, too many words at once said too forcefully. “Thanks for helping.”</p>
<p>“Hm. I’d feel pretty shitty if I ignored you, though we wouldn’t’ve got much sleep anyway. You’re kind of a mess.”</p>
<p>Caecus hummed. He didn’t really disagree with that assessment. “I’ll get out of your way as soon as I can move again.”</p>
<p>“…And go where? You even know where you are, blind kid?”</p>
<p>“Uh. Not far from the tanneries?” Although it wasn’t nearly as smelly as it should be for that.</p>
<p>“Not quite. Closer to the cattle markets.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” At some point he must have gotten turned around and went west instead of south.</p>
<p>“Yeah, oh.” Delere said with an amused note to her voice. Or maybe it was a shade of pity. “Either way, you’re not going anywhere soon after a heat like that. It’s a shit place to live, but you can sleep here as long as you want. You’re bringing in your own food though once you’re on your feet.”</p>
<p>It was an unexpected kindness on top of generosity already. For the briefest flash of a moment, Caecus remembered his childhood nanny and the no-nonsense way she’d given comfort; a pat on the head, wiping of tears, and a practical offer of distraction that had been far kinder than is own mother’s response to tears. Delere wasn’t anything like the refined woman who’d been his nanny, but there hadn’t been many women in his life that offered kindness. After too long a pause, Caecus thanked her and tried to get more sleep.</p>
<p>He could figure out what he was doing in the morning.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Delere and Jacor were rough and abrasive in ways Caecus wasn’t used to and terribly kind in others. He was used to roughhousing and flash-fire arguments and drunken mishaps that came with having too many men and women involved in dangerous illegal things crammed together in one space. You’d trusted your close friends and not much else with your safety and secrets, and trusted the group as a whole with your life in a weird, contradictory way that everyone was for the group and out for themselves at the same time. Living with Delere and Jacor wasn’t like that. For all that Delere’d said he was on his own for food, she’d shared hers with a brash sort of casualness that left no room to refuse even if he’d wanted to. And then he’d been dragged begging with them, and to church bread lines, and was somehow sleeping curled in close quarters with them both by the end of the first week.</p>
<p>Maybe Caecus just needed to fill the void in his heart. Maybe he’d just never spent time without people around him before. Either way he found himself gravitating to their group and inserting himself into it even as he told himself he was going to keep going, find someplace else or maybe leave Rome altogether.</p>
<p>Instead he kept waking up next to Jacor’s old beta smell and warm, scrawny back. Or sometime curled against Delere with her stump of a right leg brushing the back of his thighs as she tried to leach heat from him. It felt unnervingly like when Sol first struck out on his own when they were sleeping in rubble in a pile of bodies.</p>
<p>Thinking of Sol hurt too much though, so Caecus tried not to look for any similarities.</p>
<p>He was waiting for the other shoe to drop. No one could be this nice to a random omega. They didn’t gain anything from this. He didn’t have coin left from what Mica gave him. He ate food they could have shared further between them and didn’t bring in any significant amount more in begging.</p>
<p>Worse, he was a young omega, and that could bring unwanted attention. And one day they might decide to stop being kind and sell him for what small wealth that would bring.</p>
<p>Really, Caecus shouldn’t stay.</p>
<p>He found himself lying next to Delere yet another night anyway.</p>
<p>“You’re always stiff as a board before you’re asleep,” she commented sometime into the third week. “You ever relax?”</p>
<p>“Sometimes,” Caecus said. And because it kept turning around in his head, he asked, “how come you haven’t gotten rid of me?”</p>
<p>“Not like one more blind beggar’s gonna ruin the takings,” Delere said.</p>
<p>“I’m another mouth.” Begging wasn’t lucrative. Caecus had done enough of it in his life to know that you needed other money coming in to stay afloat for long. Another mouth was another mouth and one more way coin had to be divided. At least there wasn’t someone above them here to take a cut. Hating himself a bit for pointing it out, Caecus continued, “And it’s not like you couldn’t get money for me if you talked to the right people.”</p>
<p>At his side, Delere went very still. “Huh. Guess that makes you one of those street gang kids. People,” she said, “aren’t all about selling omegas like cattle in most places.”</p>
<p>“Not with normal families with businesses and trades or titles,” Caecus said. “But this is the street, not a happy little home.” And money talked. Money always talked, trumping morals and kindness in the end. Sol was an exception there, and only in ways his own moral compass took him. If he hadn’t latched on to Caecus for god knew why, maybe he wouldn’t have cared about the shit omegas lived with.</p>
<p>“Kid,” Delere said seriously, “we’re not gonna sell you. As someone who lived that shit, I wouldn’t wish it on you, especially not someone as fucked about being touched.”</p>
<p>Caecus twitched. She hadn’t really talked upfront about how he’d been in his heat, but Caecus knew how he was in the past. Anything slightly sexual and he’d lash out. Sol was the only on he’d ever trusted to touch him more than completely platonic. “Not even if you’re starving?” he challenged.</p>
<p>“We’re always starving,” she said. “Jacor, tell ‘em.”</p>
<p>“Don’t sell people here,” Jacor said obediently. “Unless Delere’s selling herself.”</p>
<p>Delere smacked at him. “Aw, shut it. I haven’t been doing that in years. Missing a leg turns people off.”</p>
<p>“Most of the time,” Jacor said with wheezy laughter.</p>
<p>“Well nobody fucks you so I think I got the better assets of us,” Delere said with a huff. “Anyway, kid, you’re not getting sold. Though if you wanted to go down that career line, I could set you up, I get the feeling that’d be the last thing you’ll ever want.”</p>
<p>“Right, so I can cry all over some bastard as I fail to be aroused at all. Peachy.”</p>
<p>“There’s all sorts of sickos out there. I’m sure you’d find your niche.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” Caecus said with a snort. It was a sick kind of humor, but then, he supposed that was one way of dealing with those kinds of fears. Despite himself, he wanted to believe Delere meant it all. He relaxed a bit consciously, deciding to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. After all they hadn’t fucked him over yet. “If you change your mind next time my heat rolls around, I’m going to find some way back here and smack you for lying.”</p>
<p>Delere just laughed and swung an arm around him, warm and solid. She’d never once touched him inappropriately after he pushed her away and yet she’d never taken his momentary flinches as a reason to stop the casual touches. She was tactile, and maybe it was because of Jacor who actually was blind, but Caecus was growing used to little touches to direct him places or catch his attention or just because.</p>
<p>Neither of them filled the ache in his heart, but it was better than being alone.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“Wait, what do you mean you’re sterile?” Delere demanded. “How would you even know if you don’t fuck?”</p>
<p>Caecus tilted his head to the side, an eyebrow lifting above his blindfold. “I took herbs. Considering your former profession, I think you know what I mean.”</p>
<p>“Why would you…? What the fuck kid?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t want a chance if… if anything ever happened in my heat.” Caecus shrugged. “I wanted to stop my heats too, but that almost got me killed and fucked my cycles.”</p>
<p>“You’re an idiot,” Delere said. It sounded like her hands were on her face from how her words were muffled. “Why didn’t your alpha say anything?”</p>
<p>“One, I didn’t have an alpha. He was a beta. Two, who do you think got me the herbs?”</p>
<p>“<em>Your alpha sterilized you?!</em>” Delere said, with a growling edge to her voice that threw Caecus completely.</p>
<p>“No,” Caecus said, brow furrowing, “he got the herbs and I chose to sterilize myself. The other thing was a mistake on both our parts. He only ever wanted to make me happy.”</p>
<p>“You. That.” Delere made a sputtering angry sound.</p>
<p>Jacor got up and made his way to her, hauling her to her foot. “We’re going for a walk,” he announced.</p>
<p>“His <em>bond mate</em>,” Delere grumbled under her breath.</p>
<p>“Shh, c’mon,” Jacor said, hauling her away. It was a slow walk since moving anywhere with Delere was an awkward three-legged balancing act.</p>
<p>Caecus stared sightlessly after them, confused about why she’d even care. It wasn’t her body. Oh. But she’d be sterile too, wouldn’t she? He listened to the more and more distant cussing and wondered if she’d wanted that. For some reason most people seemed to want to keep fertility an option, even Mica. He always forgot that.</p>
<p>Either way, Caecus made those choices himself, the good and the bad.</p>
<p>None of it was Sol’s fault at all.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>He’d been there almost a year when they found the twins. Two girls half-starved and ready to bite anyone that tried to touch them, but they’d taken bread when Caecus offered and started following like street dogs after that, hoping for a scrap of food or kindness but wary of being hurt.</p>
<p>Caecus didn’t know what to make of it. He hadn’t been around children much since he was a child, and it was arguable how long he’d actually consider himself a child considering he’d been living off the streets since he was eleven. But then the twins were street kids now too, and he could remember what it felt like to go from a world where people cared for you to one where people wouldn’t even look you in the eye to ward off their own guilt in passing you by. Delere and Jacor didn’t seem to have much of an opinion on it. A beggar was a beggar and they were still surprisingly kind about sharing their life with him. They didn’t toss their food in with Caecus when he offered scraps to the girls, but they didn’t stop him either, even when one day found them curling up under the sad little bridge they called home, sharing their warmth.</p>
<p>He’d never wanted kids, didn’t know what to do with them, but somehow Caecus found he had two children in his life now to try and feed and care for.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>A hand tugged on Caecus’s tattered blanket and he curled up tighter. The others were getting up for the day. He was not. His arms and legs felt heavy as iron, and his head felt fogged with the past. The world was too much to handle and the sun felt like an enemy. The sky could at least rain so that the heavy air would reflect his mood instead of slowly burning into his back. Worse, there was the itchy feeling of a heat coming. It was late this time. The last one had been early, only two months after the last one he’d had.</p>
<p>The hand tugged again before its owner huffed. “What’s wrong with him? Is he sick?” Acies, the bolder of the twins asked. “He won’t get up.”</p>
<p>Close to the stairs, Delere sighed. “Not the kind of sick you’re thinking of,” she said. “He gets like that sometimes. He’s more head and heart-sick than body-sick.”</p>
<p>A pause. “Is he dying?”</p>
<p>“No.” Delere snorted cynically. “Probably wishes he was though.”</p>
<p>“That’s dumb,” Acies said. She poked Caecus’s shoulder with bony fingers. “Hey. Get up. You’re not allowed to die.”</p>
<p>Caecus covered his head with his arms and pretended she wasn’t there.</p>
<p>“Aw, c’mon!”</p>
<p>“Acies…” her sister, Arta, said. Acies stopped poking him.</p>
<p>“I thought you were nice,” Acies said, striking where she knew it would hurt. “But you’re just gonna ignore us too.”</p>
<p>Somewhere Delere sighed and Jacor’s knife whittled away at something, not getting involved like usual.</p>
<p>“Well if you do die before we get back, I’m not gonna cry. You can’t even get up to get food then you’re not worth crying over.” Small feet stomped away.</p>
<p>A much quieter sigh from right behind him. “She didn’t mean it. She’s just bad with words,” Arta said. “Feel better.”</p>
<p>Then they all left and Caecus stewed with guilt, old and new. Sometimes he wondered why he kept bothering to stay alive.</p>
<p>Deep down he knew though; Sol would be disappointed if he didn’t. And Solitus’s opinion of him always mattered more than what Caecus thought of himself.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>He had the dubious honor of scarring two pre-presentation children in the realities of a fucked up heat. Caecus was pretty sure both girls were desperately praying that they’d be betas after that.</p>
<p>He commiserated.</p>
<p>“Are you <em>actually</em> dying this time?” Acies asked when Caecus came out of it enough to be coherent again. He was a bit of a captive audience since he could never move more than absolutely necessary bodily functions after heats.</p>
<p>“No,” Caecus croaked. “But it sure feels like it.”</p>
<p>“It’s not contagious, right?” Despite asking it, Acies and Arta were both squished against his shoulders.</p>
<p>“No, it’s not.” He wished Delere was here because he’d grown to find her scent a bit calming, but the moment his heat broke enough that she didn’t have to be there, she and Jacor were back to begging for their survival, which, fair enough. He wasn’t sure why she’d decided to leave him with the children instead of letting him suffer and sleep it off alone.</p>
<p>“It’s presentation,” Arta said. “Like Mom said. You can’t make anyone present some way.”</p>
<p>“You don’t <em>know</em> that,” Acies shot back. “Maybe you become omega if you spend a lot of time with one.”</p>
<p>“It has to do with what your parents are,” Caecus said. “Probably.” Beta-beta couples had betas, beta-alpha had either betas or alphas, beta-omega had betas or omegas, and alpha-omega usually only had alphas or omegas, though it wasn’t impossible to hear of a beta coming from that kind of pairing. He wasn’t sure about alpha-alpha or omega-omega. It was rarer for people to have kids in those situations, and, well, not everyone looked at that kind of pairing well, not even when they were different primary sexes. Caecus had never really understood the prejudice, but he’d long accepted that he didn’t fit with the norm when it came to what was or wasn’t attractive.</p>
<p>“Oh.” Acies hummed. “Mom was a beta, right?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. I don’t know what our dad was.”</p>
<p>“You’ll be fine even if he was an omega,” Caecus said trying to sound encouraging. A bit hard when breathing still hurt. God he hated heats.</p>
<p>“Bullshit,” Acies said.</p>
<p>Caecus huffed a laugh, hating how it made everything ache. “Don’t be an idiot and eat poison like me and you’ll be fine.”</p>
<p>Arta huffed, sounding more like her sister than usual with a frown in her voice. “Acies is right, you are an idiot.”</p>
<p>“I learned my lesson,” Caecus said.</p>
<p>The twins both made noises of disbelief. God, Caecus was becoming attached. He wasn’t supposed to get attached. They wouldn’t stay forever. They were able bodied and would leave once they had their feet under them enough to seek out better ways to get food than tagging along with a bunch of disabled beggars.</p>
<p>“Need water?” Arta offered.</p>
<p>“Aren’t I supposed to be taking care of you?” he grumbled.</p>
<p>“You’re not very good at being an adult,” Acies said in her ruthlessly blunt way. “But that’s okay. We can take turns.”</p>
<p>Yeah, Caecus didn’t plan to have kids, but he wasn’t giving these two up until they chose to leave first. He managed to lift hands to give them awkward pats that turned into hugs and quiet whispers of how they were glad heat wasn’t actually killing him and how he was dumb and needed to get better so they could eat together. They fell asleep in a big pile and he felt safer than he’d felt since he left Sol’s gang.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Musca came along a year and a half later, a toddler abandoned in a back alley, and he didn’t speak for weeks. To be honest, Caecus knew full well that he should have taken the boy to the church. Life of a church orphan wasn’t very good, but it had a higher survival rate than gutter trash. But Caecus had taken less than a minute to get attached between how the boy had smelled like a mix of sadness and that smell young children had—just enough of a distance from babies that they didn’t register as quite as vulnerable—and how he’d kept his sniffles contained and quiet trying so hard to be okay that it struck right to Caecus’s heart. He’d carried him back to the bridge, small arms looped around his shoulders so trusting that Caecus gave serious thought to tracking down whoever had left him in that alley to stab them because he was a child.</p>
<p>Who could do that to a child?</p>
<p>(He didn’t think about his own childhood, his mother turning on him, his parents abandoning him to an apprenticeship that failed before it got off the ground.)</p>
<p>“Oh, Caecus,” Delere sighed when he returned. “Another mouth to feed?”</p>
<p>“I know,” Caecus said. Because he still gave some of his food to Acies and Arta. “He was all alone.” He couldn’t explain to her why that was the sticking point. He didn’t have to though. By now Delere knew him well enough to get some of the unspoken things.</p>
<p>“He got a name?” Jacor asked.</p>
<p>The boy shoved his face into Caecus’s shoulder and didn’t answer when they asked. Acies and Arta poked and prodded and generally bothered until they got their fingers bit and the boy made an unhappy buzzing noise at them that was probably supposed to be a growl. It was far more cute than threatening.</p>
<p>“He sounds like a fly,” Arta said, and it stuck.</p>
<p>It took all of two days for Musca to grow on everyone, and by then there was no backing out.</p>
<p>For someone who never wanted to have children of his own, Caecus found he had a terribly strong parental streak. Sol was probably laughing at him in the afterlife.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It was never easy to keep fed, but they managed. Day by day, pooling together. Caecus showed Acies and Arta how to pick a pocket and use a knife. Jacor taught them how to use a knife for something other than defense. Delere taught them the best ways around guards and how to distract someone long enough to get the hell out of danger. Musca, a serious child and too quiet even months after they took him in, seemed to make it his job to lead Caecus or Jacor around when eyes were needed. He soaked up any praise and Caecus desperately wished he could see his smile when Delere ruffled his hair or Acies made up little stone-throw games on hot, summer afternoons. But Caecus hadn’t taken off his blindfold to do more than wash his face since he left Sol’s group. He hadn’t dared to open his eyes at anything other than the dark arch of the bridge in the middle of the night since then either.</p>
<p>It felt like a punishment for failing Sol, and a bit like a reminder too. His eyes didn’t bring anything good, so he might not as well not use them. They couldn’t pave a way to a better good. His use of them was as much like Icarus’s flight toward the sun as Sol’s reach for power had been.</p>
<p>So he didn’t look and see if Delere and Jacor looked as worn as their voices or what the children he’d adopted looked like. He curled up with them and knew them by touch and scent and voice and that would have to be enough.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Caecus couldn’t say he was happy. Happy wasn’t really a state of being when you never knew when your next meal would be. And it didn’t exist when you still felt like you were missing a piece of your soul even after five years. But even if the city was going to shit and food was scarcer than ever and there was a literal siege going on, he couldn’t say he was miserable. Anxious? Yes. Terrified that the people he loved would be the next to fall sick or that next time there would be no bread in the bread line or that the soldiers patrolling all the heavier would decide that today was the day to rid the streets of beggars because they weren’t adding anything useful to the siege defense? Of course. But he had made himself something of a family with Delere as a crude, sarcastic aunt and Jacor a quiet uncle and the twins and Musca all but his children. It was a shitty life, but he wanted to live it nine times out of ten and that was a vast improvement over how he’d been when he first got adopted into Delere’s home.</p>
<p>So maybe Caecus shouldn’t have been surprised that life threw him for a loop. After all, it did every other time he started to feel settled. It was just that this time it wasn’t him being left behind so much as someone new barging into his life unwanted.</p>
<p>Nona was the most terrifying beta Caecus had ever had the misfortune of meeting. If he couldn’t smell her scent, he would have thought she was an alpha just by her presence alone and how she pressed her will down on him until he bent, doing what she wanted whether he wanted to or not.</p>
<p>She burst into his daily monotony and metaphorically and literally ripped his blindfold off and made him confront what he’d spent years ignoring. That he was different. That he could do things that didn’t have an explanation and that those visions were real, not some delusion or illness.</p>
<p>And it turned out that he was the son of a god, but really, Caecus had already decided his life was a sick joke, so why not? It wasn’t as if the knowledge changed anything. Caecus still had visions and they still caused more trouble than they were worth.</p>
<p>In other circumstances, Caecus would have avoided Nona and the demigod club she dragged him to, but they had food there, food he could smuggle back to his little family so they could survive another day. It wasn’t really a choice with survival on the line.</p>
<p>So when Nona showed up again and again, Caecus took her hand and let her drag him away from the one good thing left in his life into something that was probably going to get him killed.</p>
<p>He could regret it when he was dead.</p>
<p>Until then, it was one more day of survival.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Aulus’s group skewed toward alphas. Caecus didn’t know if that was because they were children of gods or if there was some other factor going on, but either way, there was only one other omega there. Merula didn’t smell like most omegas. Most had a sweet or spicy scent. Pleasant. Merula’s scent was sweet, but it was the sweet of a rotten fruit, a corpse just turning to bloat, that edge of death that made his skin crawl. He had no desire to try and bond with someone that smelled like that. In contrast, Aulus, the leader of this little club, smelled like wealth personified, warm and a bit metallic with something almost perfumed mixing in to his alpha scent. Caecus couldn’t tell if he was wearing perfume or if it was actually his natural scent, it was too seamless.</p>
<p>Nona was like a lightning strike and something herbal and probably poisonous, but muted because she was a beta no matter what her presence and personality said. Justinian was a beta who smelled like ink and books, probably a clerk by trade, and Verena smelled like the candles her family sold and the milky scent that babies had because she was a mother of three small children even though she was an alpha.</p>
<p>Then there was Suhayl.</p>
<p>He was ashamed at how he’d tried to scent him the first time they met because Suhayl smelled <em>nice.</em> Warm sand and paper and spices that nudged the memories of his early childhood and some special occasion he couldn’t even remember anymore. Everyone else in the hidden room in Aulus’s basement had their emotions in their scents strong enough to give Caecus a headache, but Suhayl’s scent never wavered from calm no matter how impassioned everyone else got over whatever was the topic of the week. He was an alpha but he didn’t push his presence on anyone either and Caecus latched onto that. He was in over his head here, of course he latched onto the one person that felt somewhat safe and sane to his senses.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“You are calmer today,” Suhayl commented during a trip escorting Caecus back to his home. Nona, thankfully, was needed with Aulus still.</p>
<p>“I think anyone would be calmer not in a room with Nona,” Caecus said, only half joking.</p>
<p>Suhayl laughed softly and Caecus smelled a curl of amusement on him. He kind of wanted to hear and smell that again. It was as warm as Suhayl’s broad hand on his shoulder. Infinitely gentle from a man that was probably three times Caecus’s size from what bits Caecus could put together.</p>
<p>“I think,” Caecus said, answering honestly now, “I’m getting used to this. It’s weird to think because who gets used to going to secret meetings through the sewer or being demigods, but I guess it’s the new normal.” He tilted his head to listen to the near-silent footsteps of the man beside him. For someone so large, he was very good at fading into the background. “It also helps that I know where my next meal will come from.”</p>
<p>“Life has been unkind to you,” Suhayl said.</p>
<p>“Yeah. I’m hardly the only one though.” Delere, her life as a prostitute before losing a leg in an accident and somehow not dying to disease or infection and still ending up on the street. Jacor, a skilled woodworker who’d lost his sight in a bar fight and lost his livelihood not long after, no family to care for him. Acies and Arta, parents dead from illness, learning to be wary first and trust only so much until proven safe. Musca, abandoned in an alley, probably never knowing what it felt like to not be hungry or uncomfortable. When he thought of that, Caecus supposed he’d been lucky to have had the time with Sol at all. For a bit of time as a child, and a bit of time with Sol, he’d been comfortable and happy. That was more than some people could say about their lives.</p>
<p>It was funny, because usually those sort of thoughts made him depressed. Something about Suhayl being there made it so he could think about the past and not feel the pit creep close for once.</p>
<p>Suhayl’s thumb brushed against the back of his neck, a touch of comfort careful not to outstep bounds and brush too close to Caecus’s old bond mark. “Suffering,” he said seriously, “is perhaps one of the universal truths that can bridge all mankind. I am glad for the moment though that we have been able to ease some of its trials for you.”</p>
<p>Caecus liked Suhayl’s voice. He had an odd way of talking, a bit too formal, a bit too careful, with an edge of an accent that Caecus could probably place if he wanted to, comparing it with people in the markets. He was always sincere though. It made Caecus want to be sincere back.</p>
<p>“I think, despite everything, I’m glad I met your group.” It was stressful, and quite probably illegal. It was also blasphemous as heck since they weren’t supposed to believe in more than one god these days. He hated Nona, was annoyed by Justinian, and frequently baffled by Aulus. But he’d been welcomed in, fed, and treated kindly, Nona’s strange edge of violence aside. “I hope whatever your suffering in life has been,” Caecus added because he felt he should and because he meant it, “that you’re happier now too.”</p>
<p>That soft laugh again, and the way it warmed through him. “I am,” Suhayl said. “And I am glad you chose to keep attending meetings.”</p>
<p>They parted for the night a bit later, but Caecus found himself hoping Aulus needed Nona more often. He wouldn’t mind having more time to spend with Suhayl.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Nona told Aulus about the visions, witnessing them after tearing his blindfold free, and there was the subtle pressure now to use them for a purpose again. Aulus was clear that it was his choice, but the pressure was still there in the expectant feeling in the air, the way Nona’s gaze burned into him. The guilt of taking Aulus’s kindness and giving nothing in return. Caecus had always preferred some sort of reciprocity when he could manage it.</p>
<p>The thought of having regular visions again made his stomach roil. There was no one he cared about here as much as he had cared for Sol, but what if he saw one of their deaths? Worse, what if he saw the deaths of his new family, unable to stop it happening yet again?</p>
<p>“I can’t control them,” he said to Aulus. “I can’t make them happen and I can’t guarantee I’ll even understand them let alone that they’ll be useful to you.”</p>
<p>“Every little bit helps,” Aulus said, hands on Caecus’s shoulders like Caecus was his son. “If even one was relevant, then that is one more than we would otherwise have. But truly, Caecus, if you aren’t willing to do this, nothing will change in how you are treated here. You are one of us no matter what you contribute.”</p>
<p>So contribute nothing and eat Aulus’s food or tear bits of himself off in the pursuit of repaying kindness. Caecus said nothing as Aulus patted his shoulders one more time, nor when Nona caught his wrist in her iron grip.</p>
<p>“You can do so much good,” Nona commented as they walked back through sewer tunnels. “If you aren’t a coward. No one else here has the ability to see into the future.”</p>
<p>Caecus ignored her honeyed words and their underlying threats and criticisms. No matter how much Nona pushed her will at him, he wasn’t going to bend to her on this, and he wouldn’t have bent to Aulus if he’d tried to push his will on him either. In the end it was because Aulus would not try to force him that Caecus agreed to do it; it’s an old, well-worn habit to try and please other people.</p>
<p>Caecus kind of hated himself for giving in.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>He tried, deep in the night, to see, peeking at stars for the first time in ages. The sky took him like it always did. The misty garden had a Voice in it now, little whispers and nudges that Caecus didn’t remember being there before. It promised that he could make his deepest wishes a reality if he just tried to embrace what he is. That he’s more than human and there was no reason to hold back.</p>
<p>Caecus did his best to ignore the voice, because for all that the misty world made him feel at peace unlike his future-visions, he’d never been so foolish as to think that this place didn’t hold potential dangers. If he was going to answer it though, he’d have pointed out he’s as human as could be, no matter what his blood said otherwise.</p>
<p>Suhayl had it right; suffering was something all humanity could understand, and it made Caecus just as human as Jacor or Delere or Musca.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>He was pre-heat itchy when Nona came to get him to have visions for Aulus. A kindness, she said, a safe room to stay in and extra food to take for his troubles. It would keep his family under the bridge from learning about what he was, what he could do, but the last thing he wanted was to be away from Delere and the children’s comfort when he could go into heat at any moment.</p>
<p>He could feel Delere’s worried stare as he left, not saying anything, but knowing and caring all the same. He loved them. He loved them, so he’d do this too, bring back what he could for them so Acies and Arta and Musca could grow stronger. So that Delere and Jacor could have bellies full of something that wasn’t bread from the bread line. He’d do it so he could feel less like he was taking advantage of a kind, foolish man.</p>
<p>Nona put him on edge more than normal, her presence grating, her touch the last thing he wanted. When she left him at Aulus’s doorstep, her condescending pat to his cheek made him want to snarl and claw his own skin off. Caecus didn’t. Caecus followed Aulus to the room he’d set aside for Caecus’s use and knelt on tile floor alone as his skin crawled and his instincts said to find somewhere safe and familiar.</p>
<p>Caecus took off his blindfold instead and blinked at a small space with beautiful flower patterns worked into the tile floor and a wooden stand in the corner with water and fruit in case he needed them. Everything was too bright, too colorful. Brown wood tinted gold in sunlight looked like it’d warm him to touch it. Caecus’s scarred, dirty hands didn’t belong in this room, not with his ragged clothing and tangled, unwashed hair.</p>
<p>He’d been born in a house with rooms like this.</p>
<p>He shouldn’t have ever set foot in this sort of room again.</p>
<p>Caecus dug his ragged fingernails into his arms. Belong or not, he was here. He turned to the window. Green flower vines outside, curling up along the sill. They smelled sweet. He could hear bees in the garden beyond. Green, old trees, pruned and carefully maintained, a stone wall marking the edge of the property, higher and the blue of a sky that he’d missed like breathing, that hurt to look at, that haunted some of his worst nightmares. There were wispy clouds on the horizon, but the sky here was clear.</p>
<p>Unlike with Nona ripping off his blindfold, the sky didn’t catch him in its grip immediately. It was as if the last time was punishment, stealing him away because he’d rejected it for five long years. This time, the sky waited for him to reach out, tugging at the place in his head he couldn’t put words to.</p>
<p>His chest ached, the broken bond that was more of a scar than a wound, throbbing in him. He reached anyway and the sky met him halfway.</p>
<p>He came out of the vision to find himself staring up at Aulus’s ceiling in that same little room, aching from new bruises where he’d fallen. He had tears in his eyes, emotions all over the place because he’d seen properly like he hadn’t in a long time. The visions had met his call and filled his mind and he was already puzzling through them like old times.</p>
<p>The itch in his skin and bones was turning more to an ache. He scrubbed at his face. He needed to go, to make it back to Delere before he was in heat’s throes. He still had to talk to Aulus and try to pull himself together.</p>
<p>The sun was much lower in the sky than it had been when he looked out that window. Caecus turned toward the door—for Aulus was someone who preferred doors to the curtains Caecus remembered from his childhood and his family’s villa—and let himself out. There was no one in the hallway, no indication of what room might be important or which he should stay away from. He rubbed his arms, nails scratching idly. There was a persistent scent of multiple alphas here. Aulus’s household must be made up of more alphas than betas or omegas. It tickled at the instinctive part of his brain in ways that he found unpleasant but had no control over. It was surely speeding on his heat.</p>
<p>Caecus tried a door and found it locked, so he tried another one. This one opened, and he was surprised to find Suhayl in the room, sitting in the corner at a desk, a pen and scroll in front of him. He knew the man had to be Suhayl because he smelled like him, but he was even larger than Caecus had suspected, more than twice as broad as Caecus was in the shoulders, and at least two heads taller, with dark skin and tight-curled hair falling into his eyes.</p>
<p>He looked up and Caecus froze, ready to back away. The slight frown on Suhayl’s face cleared into a friendly smile. “I see you came to a decision.”</p>
<p>“Yes. Yes, I. Sorry. I didn’t know this was your room.”</p>
<p>Suhayl stood. And was up, up, Caecus’s eyes following him because he’d never seen a man so tall. Suhayl still smelled calm and still moved like a man aware that he could be frightening to others. “I do not mind,” Suhayl said, standing before him. Caecus craned his head up where blind he’d have just tilted to better hear his voice. Suhayl reached out a hand bigger than Caecus’s head to gently trace the skin below Caecus’s eyes. “You can see.”</p>
<p>“I…the visions. They’re triggered by the sky, so I tried to stop looking. It was easier to live blind.” He swayed without meaning to into that touch. The crawling feeling under his skin itched a little less. Caecus didn’t know what his body or emotions were doing, but they were doing something very strongly.</p>
<p>“I have never seen eyes such a pale color.”</p>
<p>“They were gray when I was younger.” They’d changed like a storm cloud changed to white after releasing its rain. “You live here?” Caecus asked, trying to grasp for anything that wasn’t about the warm fingers on his cheek or Suhayl’s refreshing, comforting scent.</p>
<p>“I work for Aulus,” Suhayl said. “As a guard, although I am actually less of a guard than a mind for him to bounce ideas off of.”</p>
<p>There were scrolls in this room, a codex sitting heavy on top of a chest in the corner. Ink and vellum stashed in cubbies and dried herbs handing from the ceiling in the corner. It was well lived in, this room, and the sort of place Caecus would expect from a scholar, not a guard. It didn’t fit Suhayl’s appearance, but it did fit the careful way he spoke. He’d learned more about Suhayl in the last minute than in the last month.</p>
<p>“I see,” Caecus said dumbly, mouth dry. His body ached sharply, reminding him why he had tried the door in the first place. “Is Aulus here? I need to tell him what I saw and return home.”</p>
<p>There was a crease of… concern?... on Suhayl’s face. “He is here, in his study. Caecus, should you be moving in public at the moment?”</p>
<p>Caecus realized he’s giving out omega pheromones like mad. He took a step back, flushing. Heat was normal, natural, and inescapable. It was nothing to be embarrassed about, and yet he was embarrassed. “I’m not in heat yet,” he mumbled.</p>
<p>“And you need to get back to your bond mate,” Suhayl guessed.</p>
<p>Caecus flinched without meaning to, one hand coming up to his bond mark. “No. No, I don’t. My bond mate isn’t alive anymore, but a friend helps me through my heats.”</p>
<p>“Apologies,” Suhayl said quietly. When Caecus risked looking, he could see sympathy in Suhayl’s eyes. His scent still smelled so damn calming, but there’s a bit of sadness there too, and god Caecus didn’t know what his body was doing because he wanted to just fall forward against Suhayl’s chest for some reason.</p>
<p>It was just like— He froze, breath catching in his throat. It was just like how he’d wanted to bury his face in Sol’s scent when his heat came. But he didn’t have that kind of relationship with Suhayl. He barely knew him beyond their meetings and the occasional walk back. Yet somehow his body had decided Suhayl was safe. Suhayl was an alpha though and Caecus didn’t know how he would react to Caecus in heat. He didn’t know him well enough to say if he would or wouldn’t respect the part of Caecus that rejected everything that heat was supposed to be. Caecus thought he would, he’d given no indication otherwise, but he didn’t <em>know</em>. It sparked a tiny bit of panic that could explode if he let it.</p>
<p>“Caecus?” The frown of concern had deepened and Caecus was frozen as brown eyes watched him.</p>
<p>“I.” Words caught in his throat. “I need to.” His gut twisted and there was a surge of pain into the mix of his panic, edged with the cloudy haze heat brought on. Caecus could barely breathe as Suhayl reached out again. His skin felt like it was burning in a good way when solid, callused fingers smoothed along his bare upper arm.</p>
<p>For a flash of a moment, Suhayl smelled alarmed. Then Caecus found unnatural calm slamming into his mind, shutting the panic down cold. He blinked once, twice, head suddenly clearer.</p>
<p>“What did you do?” Caecus asked in an even voice, peripherally aware he should be even more alarmed, but not alarmed at all.</p>
<p>“I am pushing back your fear and panic for a moment so that you may think clearly,” Suhayl said, voice even as ever. If it wasn’t for the way he looked like he was concentrating, Caecus wouldn’t think he was doing anything at all.</p>
<p>“You manipulate emotions?”</p>
<p>“I control them when I must, but I rarely use it,” Suhayl responded. “It is not a gift I care to use for it can affect both directions.”</p>
<p>Meaning he could feel Caecus’s panic and fear. Meaning he’d just chosen to press calm over it. How much of Suhayl’s composed nature was true and how much was him making himself that way? How much of the peace Caecus felt around him was real or not?</p>
<p>“I promise,” Suhayl said, “this is only the second time I have used it on you.”</p>
<p>“The first?”</p>
<p>“I calmed you some when you came to the first meeting, no more than to push panic to a manageable level.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” That was something. He hoped Suhayl was telling the truth. “And why I find you relaxing?”</p>
<p>Suhayl blinked and a tiny smile tilted his lips up. “I assume that is something based on my personality combined with biology.”</p>
<p>Biology. Right. Because Suhayl was an alpha and Caecus was an omega and Suhayl smelled better to him than any alpha ever had. “Speaking,” Caecus forced out, “of biology, I don’t have normal heats. They’re dry and I’m not interested in sex. If that’s a problem, you really need to let me leave now because I think I’m going to end up head first in it faster than I’ve ever had it come on.”</p>
<p>“What do you do to help yourself through it?” Suhayl asked softly.</p>
<p>“Cry? Scent my friend and try to sleep if I can?” Caecus swallowed, Suhayl already letting some of his control go and the fear creeping back in. “I used to have my bond mate, but ever since he died it’s been worse.”</p>
<p>“That does happen in pair bonds when one outlives the other,” Suhayl said, like he’d seen it happen before. Like he found it sad but understandable. He didn’t have a bond mark, but neither had Sol. Caecus had never bit him back because it hadn’t felt like something he needed to do. For all Caecus knew, Suhayl had lost a bond mate too.</p>
<p>“I’m just broken,” Caecus said.</p>
<p>“You,” Suhayl said gravely, “are more than that.”</p>
<p>It was bewildering because no matter what else Caecus might be, he’d always just been the gutter trash his parents didn’t want. The way Suhayl pinned him with his stare, it made him think that Suhayl saw him as something more than the sort of homeless person people let their eyes skim over. He wasn’t sure if he liked feeling seen.</p>
<p>The ache in his gut went from ignorable to insistent and Caecus winced, curling in on himself. “I… Okay I am not going to make it back. Will Aulus… can I stay until it passes?”</p>
<p>“Of course.” He said it confidently, like he knew for a fact that Aulus would let some strange beggar of an omega stay spewing pheromones in his spare room like it was nothing. Maybe for Aulus and all his riches it really was nothing. Suhayl let go of Caecus’s arm and he felt the last of his true emotions come back, sharp and almost overwhelming. God he didn’t want this to be happening. Heats were the worst and would forever ruin his life. “Caecus,” Suhayl said. “Do you want me to help you through this?”</p>
<p>Did he? He still wanted to face plant into Suhayl’s abs and breathe him in, so maybe yes, some part of him did want Suhayl. He wanted to be held and soothed and Suhayl was so big he could surround Caecus in the best hug ever if he wanted to. Suhayl was in control now even with Caecus spewing pheromones at him. He touched him so gently too.</p>
<p>Caecus shuddered with another clench of pain. Fine. Fine, body. He’d surrender to instinct this one time. “Please.”</p>
<p>Suhayl’s hands were infinitely gentle as he pushed hair from Caecus’s face. “Thank you for your trust. I promise to respect your boundaries.” Caecus shivered. It felt good. He wanted to be touched like this. Like he mattered. Like he was cared for. Whether or not it was true—how would he know yet?—he wanted it. Suhayl pressed a kiss on his forehead and Caecus gave in to the instinct to press close.</p>
<p>Suhayl’s hug was just as good as he’d thought it would be.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It was the most lucid heat Caecus had had in years. Suhayl’s touch grounded him, but more than that, something in Suhayl’s powers let him push aside the worst of the pain and brain fog. On one hand, it meant Caecus was embarrassingly aware of how needy he got, tugging Suhayl this way and that to scent him or direct his hands where he wanted to be held or touched. He’d even kissed him, aware the whole time at how it strained Suhayl’s seemingly infinite self-control. It was the most intimate he’d been with another person in years.</p>
<p>It felt wonderful. It felt horrible. He’d still burned alive and ached to his core and sweat too much with each wave of hot-cold pain. But Suhayl had smoothed his hair from his sweat-sticky face and held him and made him drink water and eat so he wasn’t wrung out near as bad as usual at the end of it.</p>
<p>Caecus was a little horrified to realize he might be a bit in love with Suhayl already. He should be running for the hills. Instead, when his heat broke, Caecus found himself laying on Suhayl’s chest and squinting past the blur of his vision to memorize his face. How his hair made tight ringlets against his jaw, the broad nose with very faint freckles barely darker than his skin tone. Long eyelashes and a wide mouth that quirked up a bit more on the left than the right when he smiled. A little scar on one eyebrow. One of his bottom teeth was chipped. All little details he didn’t know if he would see again, so Caecus pressed them in his memory and tucked them away.</p>
<p>Suhayl woke up while Caecus was trying to decide if he should squirm off his chest or not. He smiled, warm and open, and Caecus felt his heart stutter.</p>
<p>He was doomed. And was also being terribly disloyal to Sol’s memory. But.</p>
<p>“You are okay?” Suhayl asked, brushing fingers down Caecus’s face like this position wasn’t odd at all. Like he hadn’t seen Caecus broken in heat and he still had dignity and value.</p>
<p>“Yeah. I’m good now.” Caecus was the opposite of fine. He was feeling far too much and all of it contradictory.</p>
<p>Suhayl didn’t call him on it, just kissed his forehead again and let him go. Caecus almost asked him to pull him back into a hug and never let go. But he did have a life to get back to and family who was probably very worried by now.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Caecus said, unable to meet Suhayl’s eyes.</p>
<p>“I would help you every time if you let me,” Suhayl said with enough solemnity that Caecus believed him.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until later, after talking to Aulus and after Justinian of all people lead him back to home, the world back to sightless unknowns, that he realized that Suhayl hadn’t even left at some point to take care of himself the way Sol used to.</p>
<p>He really was too nice and Caecus never had a chance of not feeling something, did he?</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“You’re alive,” Delere said with relief.</p>
<p>“I’m alive.” Caecus passed food to her, but she barely looked at it, patting him and scenting him.</p>
<p>“You smell like alpha.” She was sharp, concerned. “You went into heat?”</p>
<p>“I went into heat,” Caecus said wryly. “A… a friend helped me. He didn’t do more than hold me.”</p>
<p>He could feel her burning a hole in him with her stare. “Huh,” she said finally. “Well good on you, kid.”</p>
<p>Caecus was too flustered to protest what those words implied. Besides, the kids noticed him then and he had two pre-teens and a child clinging to him and there wasn’t really any time to continue that conversation.</p>
<p>He didn’t really want to have that talk anyway.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>In the vision world, the one where he wasn’t seeing bits of the future, the one with the misty skies, where fog curled around his hands and there was always well-worn stone walls to sit on or follow, Caecus didn’t have a secondary sex. He didn’t smell like an omega or a beta or anything else. He didn’t smell like much of anything at all. It was liberating, freeing the way that seeing clearly was freeing, every nuanced detail sharp and clear.</p>
<p>Caecus picked a bitter orange from one of the trees, the tang of citrus sharp and biting. He knew better than to eat it; some instinct told him it would be a terrible idea, much like listening to the Voice would be a terrible idea, but he liked the smell and the way the fruit sat heavy in his hands.</p>
<p><em>You can be anything you want to be here</em>, the Voice promised. <em>Anything at all</em>. And it wasn’t lying. There were no hormonal urges, no feeling like his skin didn’t quite fit. His hair was clean and loose against his shoulders and absolutely nothing on his body hurt.</p>
<p>That was how dreams worked though, and even though he knew this wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t reality either. It was some nebulous in-between. Something where probability shifted and barriers were thin. He could dive from here into visions if he wanted to, he was certain, or right back into his body. He did neither because even if this place was undoubtedly dangerous, the feeling of being right in his own skin was worth the risk.</p>
<p><em>You could make yourself a God here,</em> the Voice whispered. <em>Gain power to change the world and make this reality true.</em></p>
<p>The Voice never seemed to understand that Caecus didn’t care to be a god. What did a beggar need power for? What use to him was worship? The only one whose worship he would have accepted was already dead, and that relationship had always worked more the other way around.</p>
<p>The Voice kept trying through, and Caecus kept ignoring it. No one promised power without strings attached. Sticky orange juices ran down his palm as his nails bit into its rind. And power… power never lasted long because there would always be someone waiting to rip it from you.</p>
<p>When Caecus woke on Aulus’s mosaic floor, his hands smelled like citrus and the sun was high in the sky.</p>
<p>No, Caecus knew only too well the cost of power. Only a fool would want to be a god.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>After visions, Caecus had taken to sitting in Suhayl’s room. He’d been offered to have the visions there to start with, but visions remained something too private to do in front of someone, and despite his trust in Suhayl, he’d never been comfortable with the fact that his body was essentially helpless the entire time his mind was elsewhere. He might have spent most of his life collapsing at random moments in front of strangers, but he liked the bit of control having that private room gave him.</p>
<p>After the first offer, Suhayl didn’t press. He was careful of boundaries, and Caecus liked that about him. Suhayl was the gentlest man Caecus had ever met, which was why it was surprising to learn that he’d been a soldier.</p>
<p>“I deserted,” Suhayl said, as they curled up side by side. “I was once a young fool who wanted to see the world and thought being a soldier was the way to do it.” He smiled humorlessly. “It would have been a better choice to join one of the caravans that passed by my family’s home and travel that way. But I had a strong arm and body, and more than one boy I knew went off to war. I left and I have not gone home since.”</p>
<p>It was easy to picture Suhayl with a weapon; he was tall and strong and probably had been a good soldier. But Caecus couldn’t see him striking another man down even though Caecus knew he must have at some point. Every interaction they’d had, be it in Aulus’s group or alone, indicated that Suhayl was an empathic person, literally and figuratively. If he could feel another’s pain, how could he kill them?</p>
<p>“I learned quickly that it did not suit me,” Suhayl said, seeming to read Caecus’s thoughts. “Battles were terrible. Hundreds of men angry, in pain, and dying… For all I was a good fighter in practice, I did not do well putting those skills into action. It broke me, but I had signed years of my life to my commanders. I would have deserted sooner had I not had a good friend.”</p>
<p>He went silent, and Caecus could read between those pauses. A good friend had kept Suhayl fighting, but he’d still deserted in the end. Either the friend had not been enough or he’d died and Suhayl hadn’t had anything left to hold onto.</p>
<p>“I learned,” Suhayl said, turning away from that line of thought, “to hone my ability. Until the pain others felt no longer hurt me. Until I could take that pain and turn it on them.” He sounded ashamed, but Caecus understood all too well that it was easy to do terrible things when life dealt you a bad hand. Caecus had hurt people as well. Sol killed dozens of people, had a terribly sadistic streak for all that he protected those he called his own. Caecus took one of Suhayl’s hands in his, accepting. And Suhayl relaxed against him. Trust could go both ways. “I was rewarded with a chance to become a guard for nobility, away from the front lines. I met Aulus there and realized he was like me.”</p>
<p>“You always knew what you were then?” Caecus asked, because it seemed strange to think that people could know this. That they didn’t have mothers who dismissed their conception as dreams.</p>
<p>“Always,” Suhayl said. “Both my mother and grandfather were gods. My family was doubly blessed. I knew my mother for several years in my life when she chose to wear mortal form… She did not stay to see my younger siblings grow, but she visited.”</p>
<p>It seemed impossible, a goddess walking in mortal planes, but it made as much sense as any. Suhayl’s mother must have been a strong goddess though. From what Caecus could tell, most gods didn’t seem to do much these days.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know until I met Nona,” Caecus said. “I just thought I was cursed.”</p>
<p>“Blessings and curses can have a very fine line of difference,” Suhayl said.</p>
<p>Caecus hummed in agreement. He could do good with his power but so much more often it brought pain and difficulty into his life. “So Aulus convinced you to desert?”</p>
<p>“He did.” And Suhayl smiled again but it was fond and warm, like Aulus had been the best thing to happen in his life for years. For a flash of a moment Caecus wondered if there was something more there, if Suhayl loved Aulus in ways that a servant shouldn’t, but it was washed away in the next moment. “He offered me a home and employment and treated me like a brother. He is seen as eccentric and foolish despite his brilliant mind, but he has a kind heart. I have worked for him and he has protected me ever since that time. He is a good friend.”</p>
<p>And Caecus stored that smile away in his memory like he stored every positive thing he saw these days, unsure how long he would let himself have this. Unsure how long it could last before something else tore this bubble of peace away, because nothing lasted. They were in the middle of a war and a siege and people were dying every day. Nothing lasted.</p>
<p>“I’m glad you found each other,” Caecus said, meaning it. “I’m glad he’s a good man.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Caecus didn’t talk about Sol. Not beyond the rare reference of his bond mark, or the fact that the one who gave him it was dead. The twins asked once, far more bold in asking potentially devastating questions than Delere and Jacor who knew better than to pick at half-healed wounds. Caecus hadn’t known how to answer them then, when they asked what sort of person his bond mate had been, and at the time all he had been able to say was that Solitus had been like a sun to his moon, bright and shining and warm.</p>
<p>It was only after spending a second heat in Suhayl’s care and all the time growing a new, strengthening bond between, that he could look back and admit that Sol hadn’t been as perfect as Caecus liked to think he was.</p>
<p>Caecus sat on Suhayl’s bed, Suhayl gently coaxing tangles from his hair, and studied the blindfold in his lap. “You know,” he said, “I used to See for someone else once. And the greatest irony is he was the one that taught me to hide my eyes away.”</p>
<p>Suhayl’s hands paused and Caecus could feel him listening. The touch of his fingers against the back of Caecus’s neck meant Suhayl could probably feel, if he wanted to, the messy, tangled knot of emotions Caecus could never hope to untangle that bringing up Sol never failed to manifest.</p>
<p>“It was for protection. Because I can’t control it. It helped a lot, but I lost a lot too. He always made a point of taking the blindfold off me when it was just the two of us and I don’t know if it was something he did for me, or if it was something he did because he liked not sharing that part of me.” Caecus twisted cloth between his fingers. “I loved him. With my whole being. I’d have done anything for him because he made life worth living back then. But I don’t…” Caecus tried to remember if it was his decision to start separating from the rest of the group, spending more time in their room Seeing and less time making a place for himself with others. If it had been Sol quietly encouraging it the way he had checked that Caecus’s blindfold was tied right when he first started wearing it, and been just that hint more attentive in that way that made Caecus more likely to repeat whatever he’d done to get that affection. Especially after the poison.</p>
<p>It hurt to wonder. To doubt. How much of Caecus’s life was filled with Sol’s deliberate actions and how much was him acting on impulse, on emotion like Caecus did? In his heart, Caecus still knew Sol had loved him, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t carefully maneuvered Caecus just where he needed him just like he did with everyone else in their lives.</p>
<p>Caecus touched his bond mark and swallowed hard. “Does it still matter,” he asked, “when someone is dead why they did something? When it doesn’t change how you reacted to it or how things panned out?”</p>
<p>“Do you wonder if this person deliberately harmed you?” Suhayl asked, trying to figure out Caecus’s messy emotions probably.</p>
<p>“I don’t think he’d ever have done it deliberately,” Caecus said. “But he had flaws even if I didn’t acknowledge them. Even if I pretended they didn’t affect me. He was selfish and territorial and liked to be in control. He held grudges and never lost sleep over hurting someone if it was getting back at a hurt done to someone that was his. And I just followed along because he was the one with the dreams and goals and I just wanted to be there with him. Helping him. Even if it meant giving up bits of myself.” Sol gave up bits of himself too, though, pieces he didn’t show anyone else. Did that balance out?</p>
<p>“He died and there was only one person who cared how it affected me,” Caecus said. “I built him up to be my everything and he let me.” Encouraged it even. And which of them was more to blame in the end?</p>
<p>Suhayl’s hands were gentle as ever against Caecus’s jaw, tilting his head so he could meet his eyes. “You can love someone and they can love you back and still hurt you. With or without meaning to,” he said. “I think that to you at least, it does matter why this person did something or you would not be asking these questions now. But Caecus, even if you do not like the answers you might find, that does not make the emotions you felt then lesser. It does not make the things you feel now wrong.”</p>
<p>Tears pricked Caecus’s eyes. He felt seen, through and through, and it was almost scary the way Suhayl seemed to look into his soul. “It feels like I’m betraying his memory to wonder about these things.”</p>
<p>“The man you loved was human,” Suhayl said, kindly, so kindly as he wiped the tears away. “It is not a betrayal to see him for his flaws as well as his good traits. It merely means you have stopped making him into more than a man.”</p>
<p>And that hurt, acknowledging that Sol had been just another human, messed up and fallible and broken as Caecus was himself. He hadn’t had any more control or idea of where things were headed than Caecus had. He’d had dreams and goals, but he’d made mistakes like any man did. And some of those mistakes had hurt Caecus whether Solitus had wanted them to or not. That was how the world worked.</p>
<p>The world was not a kind place. It was indifferent, neither cruel nor just nor kind.</p>
<p>Caecus wept for the first time in a long time, spilling old aches that had built up with how long he’d tried not to think of them.</p>
<p>“I miss him,” Caecus confessed against Suhayl’s chest. “It’s been almost six years and I still miss him.”</p>
<p>“I understand,” Suhayl said, and Caecus believed him because Caecus was sure he’d lost someone dear to him in that same way too.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>He forgot sometimes that Aulus’s group had a purpose, that they weren’t just some club of demigods. He remembered when the weather went cold, and the bread in the church bread lines grew scarcer, and Aulus grew tense and strained. He was someone important, Caecus had gathered. He’d had something to do with the floating mills that had been built in the river, letting them grind flour even with the siege keeping access from the old ones. He wanted to outlast the Goths, it seemed, and that fit everything Caecus knew about him. He believed in the old gods and still worshipped them even though that was the kind of thing that could get you in trouble these days. Had gotten Aulus in trouble with his own family from what Caecus could tell, though not with the military yet.</p>
<p>That was why it was so shocking when he made the suggestion to try to end the siege. End it with Rome’s loss. The table was silent at that suggestion.</p>
<p>“And then what?” Justinian, usually one of Aulus’s staunchest supporters—he was Aulus’s cousin though, if what Suhayl told him was true—burst out. “Let them raid the streets? Run the remaining nobility out of their villas and slaughter them? You know your head and mine would be waiting for the blow to fall.”</p>
<p>Aulus sighed. “I am going to be honest. This siege has lasted years. The only reason the city has held on so long was we managed to hold the south and get supplies through the river. But that, as everyone knows, has been cut off. Repeatedly. The city is nearing an end of its resources, and there’s reason to believe that the Goths plan to disable the aqueducts to cut off the clean water supply as well. People are dying of illness and it is only going to get worse. There would be <em>less</em> deaths if the siege ended before winter fully sets in than trying to manage another unnaturally cold winter.”</p>
<p>Caecus shivered. Last year had been bad, chill starting in the middle of summer with the worst winter he’d ever seen. People had frozen to death. The only reason he and the others hadn’t was because they all huddled for warmth, and even then it was a miracle no one lost any fingers or toes.</p>
<p>“You make it sound like we could even do it,” Merula said. She barely ever spoke, so naturally the fact that she just did had everyone listening. “Demigods or not, we are seven people, only one of us is a fighter.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Nona said, and Caecus could hear a smirk on her face, “I think you and I could put up a fight.”</p>
<p>Merula scoffed, but didn’t actually contradict her. Considering what Caecus knew about Nona’s vicious tendencies, he was a bit nervous what Merula could be capable of that Nona would consider her strong.</p>
<p>“I’m a clerk,” Justinian said, voice clipped. “I can’t help with an uprising! I uphold order!”</p>
<p>“Justinian,” Aulus said with more patience than Caecus thought Justinian ever deserved, “would this upset the balance or restore it?”</p>
<p>Justinian sputtered, then went suspiciously silent.</p>
<p>Since no one else seemed to want to say it, Caecus pointed out, “I thought you intended to stick with Rome. To keep one last bastion to the gods.” Aulus’s words, not Caecus’s.</p>
<p>“And I thought you were determined not to give the gods any thought,” Aulus said wryly.</p>
<p>“I don’t,” Caecus said, because he really didn’t care if some deity had fathered him; that god sure as hell hadn’t been there at any point in his life, hadn’t saved him from any troubles or given him anything more than a burden of an ability. Without it, maybe he’d be nobility still, or if not that, he would have at least made it through his apprenticeship as a potter. “But they mean a lot to you. Rome means a lot to you.”</p>
<p>“And I would let that go if it meant survival,” he said.</p>
<p>His power was luck. How much of luck was following impulses at the right times? If the man with luck decided it was time to abandon ship, then Rome truly was forsaken.</p>
<p>“And what of the people?” Caecus asked. “What of the families struggling to survive who will have the last of their livelihoods likely ruined when Rome is invaded? What of the people on the streets, where will they go when soldiers march with swords out?” What would happen to Delere and Jacor and the twins and Musca? Hell, what would even happen to the old gangs he’d been a part of? Did they even still exist?</p>
<p>“I would offer my protection to anyone you wanted to get out,” Aulus said, gently like that wasn’t damning so many others to death. Like he could even <em>promise</em> safety. “Believe me when I say I am sure that fewer people will die this way. Rome is going to fall, one way or another. We are merely going to make it faster and less painful for all involved.”</p>
<p>Less painful. Like it wouldn’t be painful to lose the only home he had. “And then what? You all have –homes, skills, things to rely on, but my people don’t have that, Aulus. We have a bridge and a few tattered blankets and three children who haven’t even presented yet!”</p>
<p>“I would care for them,” Aulus said, “like I would care for you.”</p>
<p>“You can’t help everyone, Aulus,” Caecus said. “You can’t even guarantee you can save yourself.”</p>
<p>“Oh he can do that,” Nona drawled. “Luck is pretty much synonymous with self-preservation.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“What do you mean, we’re leaving?” Delere asked.</p>
<p>Caecus, hugged himself, feeling as lost as he’d ever been. Was this the right choice? But Aulus wasn’t going to give them one, really. “We’re leaving because the city is going to fall. And I don’t want to lose any of you.”</p>
<p>Musca’s small hand gripped a handful of his tunic and Caecus relaxed enough to reach out, put a hand on his head.</p>
<p>“How do you know?” Acies demanded. “You can’t know. The city could have been breached months ago.”</p>
<p>“I <em>know</em>,” Caecus said with a grimace. “The man who’s been feeding us… He’s involved with the military. An engineer. He’s been watching this whole time and it’s going to shift soon, and Rome will fall.”</p>
<p>“And he’s what, protecting you? Letting you take us with you at that?” There was skepticism there, but of course there would be. “Caecus, what does he have you doing that he’d pull those strings?”</p>
<p>Caecus shook his head.</p>
<p>“I thought you left gang life behind,” Delere said calmly.</p>
<p>Musca’s grip in his shirt went tight.</p>
<p>“I did.” With trembling fingers, Caecus picked at the knot of his blindfold. “Delere…” The blindfold slid free and he looked at them, saw them with his own eyes for the first time. He blinked away the blur. Delere looked a lot like how he’d pictured her, graying and grizzled and covered in wrinkles. But she had a round face even with how little food they lived off of, and smile lines more than frown lines, and she was probably beautiful in her younger days. Jacor was going white with a flyaway beard, fingers full of scars from knife slips, eyes bare and milky white with scars. Acies and Arta were that spindly age of thirteen where they were on the cusp of growing up, but not quite there yet, wide set eyes and dark brown hair cut short because Acies wanted there to be less to grab if someone tried. And Musca. Musca had a look of a Celt to him, a bit too pale and light haired for Rome. His wide brown eyes looked up at Caecus so seriously Caecus wanted to rub away the crease between his eyes. He’d have wrinkles by the time he made twenty at the rate he was going.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Delere said, because she could tell his eyes were focusing and taking things in. “Fuck you, you can see. Six years and you can see.”</p>
<p>The betrayal on their faces hurt like a hot knife. “It’s more complicated than that.” He was careful not to look up, not to look at the sky because he couldn’t have a vision right now, not when he was trying to explain.</p>
<p>“Either you’re blind or you’re not, it’s not that hard,” Delere snapped.</p>
<p>“I have… fits.” The old term for them, Sol used. It would work here. “Brought on by my sight. It. The blindfold was something my bond mate came up with. To keep me safe from them. When he died, I didn’t feel safe without it.”</p>
<p>Delere shook her head. If she wasn’t down a leg, Caecus would bet she’d be walking off now.</p>
<p>“But you never wanted to see?” Musca asked, tugging on Caecus’s clothing. “Ever?”</p>
<p>Caecus flicked a glance at Jacor, how he winced. Jacor who could never see no matter how much he wanted to. “Of course I did. I’ve wanted to see your faces for years.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you?” Acies asked, sharp and ready to lash out while Arta just looked sad. “Your fits can’t be so bad you wouldn’t ever look or you wouldn’t be looking at us now.”</p>
<p>“I.” He promised himself he wouldn’t? He was afraid to? But that wasn’t it at its heart. It had been a punishment of sorts after the first few months. He’d never see Sol again so why see anything at all. “I didn’t want to let myself have something I wanted,” he said finally.</p>
<p>“But you will now,” Delere said. She looked like she wanted to smack him and Caecus wouldn’t even protest if she did.</p>
<p>“Because one of the people I work with literally ripped my blindfold off and made me see. And kept making me see whether I wanted to or not. And… and the fits are bad, but I know how to avoid the worst of them. I’m avoiding them now.” He wondered if they thought he was being meek or if they realized that he was keeping his eyes down for a reason. “I’ve been helping the people who’ve been feeding us, and I needed my eyes for it whether I wanted to or not.”</p>
<p>“And now you’re going to drag us into your new gang’s problems,” Delere said, arms crossed over her chest. “Caecus, I told you when we took you in, we’re not gangs here.”</p>
<p>“They’re not…” He rubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t know how to explain it so it’s believable. But this group isn’t the sort of gang I came from. It’s an eccentric rich man, an ex-soldier, a mother of three. It’s a slave and a clerk and some terrifying woman and me. That’s it, Delere. He finds people he feels a connection to and sponsors them and sometimes they help him. Usually they don’t. But he has connections who say Rome is going to fall and he’s promised to try to get his people and their loved ones out. I promise you, Rome is going to fall.” Because of Aulus. Because of Caecus’s own help, and guilt winds tight around his gut like a terrible snake, but like Aulus said, it would happen anyway, just after that much more starvation and attrition until there was barely anything left to be conquered. “Yes, I lied about my vision, but I never once lied about caring for all of you. And if I can save you, I will.”</p>
<p>Surprisingly, Jacor spoke up, “You didn’t need to show your eyes for that.”</p>
<p>And Caecus sighed. Because he really had to. “They’ll be expecting me to see from time to time. And I’ll have fits. It was now or in some remote location later. And… I wanted to give you a choice.” He had a choice. He could stay. But he wasn’t going to take this from them.</p>
<p>“And our options are run off with your rich guy or stay and die?” Delere grunted.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to go,” Musca said. “This is home.”</p>
<p>And Acies and Arta looked at each other like they were having a conversation with their eyes alone. How often had they done that and he never knew? “There’s no guarantee that we die,” Acies said.</p>
<p>“We’d probably die,” Jacor said, unbothered by that thought apparently. “People like us don’t have anything worth keeping us alive for.”</p>
<p>And Delere’s eyes flitted to the girls, because of course they did. Because they might not have presented yet but a woman, no matter the secondary sex, was always more at risk. Child or not, they were too. “Where would we go and how would we stay alive?” Delere asked heavily.</p>
<p>“…I think Aulus is planning to go to Constantinople.” Because of course he was. Of course he would follow the seat of power. If there was no more Rome, then he would choose the next best thing. He was a noble, and he would have to keep his place of power if he wanted to protect anyone. “His family is already heading there from what I can tell. He promised he’d take us with him if we want. And if not, he’d make sure we got anywhere we wanted to be.”</p>
<p>“Like any of us know anywhere but here,” Delere muttered.</p>
<p>“I traveled once,” Jacor said, his creaky voice soft. “From the country to the city where there were jobs and tradesmen…”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but that was decades ago, and it’s not like any of us has any skills we can sell outside of the obvious.” Delere wasn’t a prostitute anymore, but Caecus knew she’d pick up the trade again if she had to; there were people that wouldn’t care that a woman was old and missing a leg. And Jacor had his carvings. But none of that was livable with six mouths to feed. And Caecus wanted better for the children even if he couldn’t expect better for himself. Even if he was the weakest link among them in skills, his pickpocketing rusty and both too old and too young to be a truly sympathetic beggar. All he had was the connection to Aulus. And all that he had there was bound up in his vision, what little help it gave.</p>
<p>“He would provide for us,” Caecus said. He thought he could probably convince him to help the children get apprenticeships and education. They could have a future that wasn’t the streets this way.</p>
<p>“We’d be sparrows in a gilded cage,” Delere said, unhappy.</p>
<p>“We would,” Caecus agreed. He hated the idea, how much he would owe Aulus and he’d never be able to repay it. “But it could be a chance for them to fly free.” He let his eyes linger on the children, how Acies bristled and Arta’s hands clasped together so tight her knuckles were white and how Musca’s frown only went deeper.</p>
<p>“We’re not going to leave you,” Musca said, like it was that simple. “Don’t even say that.”</p>
<p>“And we don’t need some… some stuck up rich ass’s money to live!” Acies spat. “Don’t make it sound like we won’t survive if we don’t. Don’t make it sound like we can’t crawl up with our own two feet!”</p>
<p>“I just want everyone <em>safe,”</em> Caecus said, desperate and his scent reflecting it. Scent was one of those things; you either learned to cover it up or you owned it, because it didn’t lie with strong emotions. “I want you safe even after we’re gone. And I can’t give you that here. None of us can, and we sure as hell can’t scrape together enough for an apprenticeship fee.”</p>
<p>“If we chose to stay,” Arta said timidly, “what… what would you do?”</p>
<p>What would Caecus do? Ha. It wasn’t really a choice now was it. “I’d be here. And we’d probably die. But I’d be here.” Did they really think otherwise?</p>
<p>“And your… friend…” Delere said, eyes narrowed. “He’d let you?”</p>
<p>Thinking of Suhayl made Caecus’s heart ache and he knew there was a new edge to his distressed scent, probably telling Delere just how much Suhayl meant if she hadn’t figured it out already. “…We aren’t bonded.” Could Caecus ever bond again? He didn’t know, and Suhayl never said if he’d bonded before the other way, since no mark was on his skin. “He doesn’t have any say in my choices. And I don’t have a say in his.” Oh, why did that ache so much? Foolish heart, wanting to give itself away. Hadn’t they learned that it wouldn’t end well? “He’s not my family. You are.”</p>
<p>“If he ordered you?” Delere asked, pressing.</p>
<p>“I’d turn him down. I’ve never met anyone, alpha or not that I couldn’t ignore an order from if I really didn’t want to do it.” He didn’t resist most orders, but once upon a time it had been Sol giving them. He’d never wanted to turn away. “And I want to stay with you more than I do him.”</p>
<p>She studies him for a painfully long moment and Caecus hopes his face conveys sincerity. “Fine,” she said finally.</p>
<p>“What?” Acies turned to Delere wide eyed. “You just said—”</p>
<p>“Here we survive,” she said, grimacing. “So we’re going to go and live and if when we get to wherever we’re going it doesn’t work, we go back to the streets whether Caecus’s benefactor wants us to or not.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Caecus said. “For trusting me.”</p>
<p>“You’d better not make me regret that,” Delere grunted.</p>
<p>“We can’t just leave,” Acies said. “Jacor, Arta, Musca, someone say something!”</p>
<p>Arta put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I… they have a point. And I don’t want to die yet.”</p>
<p>“We wouldn’t just be giving up,” Acies argued. “We can take care of ourselves.”</p>
<p>“But we’ve always done better together.” Arta bit her lip. “Please?”</p>
<p>Looking into her eyes, Acies folded. She was never able to say no to her sister for long. Not when it was something that mattered. “Okay. I won’t like it but okay.”</p>
<p>Arta folded her into a hug and they stood holding each other, young and lost. It made Caecus’s heart hurt. He pulled Musca close, needing to reach out as well. Musca made a tiny sound, in-between unhappiness and resignation.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” Caecus said, because he was ripping apart the foundations of all of their lives. “Sorry.”</p>
<p>Up on the road above the bridge, someone gave a sharp whistle, and when Musca pulled back to look, he followed the glance on automatic. He wouldn’t have a few months ago. Funny how reacting to visual things came back so quickly once he let them.</p>
<p>For a moment he saw Nona, her brown hair pulled up high on her head and her finery so out of place here this far south in the city. She wasn’t supposed to be here yet at all. She was supposed to give him at least until nightfall to convince them. He felt a stab of irritation before his attention was caught by the blue sky behind her and he felt that trip in his brain that meant he was going to fall into a vision. “Dammit,” Caecus got out, managing to step back from Musca before his consciousness was stolen away.</p>
<p>He hoped he didn’t hurt too badly when he woke up. Falling from standing onto stones was never a fun experience.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>A blackbird flew against a midnight blue sky, blotting out jewel-bright stars in a sweep of inky darkness. It flew fast, but it was falling, feathers shedding like black snow. It kept trying, kept flapping until the last flight feather slipped away and it plummeted toward the blank nothing below. Then it was just the stars, brilliant, but uncaring, and a few stray feathers still drifting in the air.</p>
<p>It was beautiful and terrible and Caecus’s gut twisted with fear only half realized. It was a vision, and like all visions there was a chance it could happen. Or, if he wasn’t too late, he could stop it.</p>
<p>A falling bird wasn’t subtle.</p>
<p>Last time it had been Sol. Last time he had been too late. This time there was only one person who was a blackbird. Merula was a mystery, but he didn’t want to be the foreteller of her death. As the vision started to unravel, stars spooling together and blue fading toward gray, Caecus reached toward consciousness with as much will as he could muster.</p>
<p>The world went black. Then it went bright.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Caecus gasped, body jerking into awareness. Hair in his face—his and not his, hands supporting him and a frail back to his front. The faint wheeze of breath that he would know anywhere because he slept next to it most days. “Jacor?” Caecus rasped. His head hurt. He must have hit it on the way down. Or when he hit the ground. Actually, most of his left side had a scattering of bruises. Wonderful to know what direction he fell in.</p>
<p>“Back in the land of the living?” Jacor grunted. He wheezed a breath, hitching Caecus more firmly on his back as Caecus tried to squirm off him.</p>
<p>“I can. I can walk,” Caecus said. Jacor let go. Caecus swept his eyes low, seeing Delere’s frame leaning against Acies and Arta, Musca’s small feet a bit behind them with Jacor bringing up the rear. Leading them… Nona. Caecus didn’t need to recognize the sandals to know it was her.</p>
<p>“See anything interesting?” Nona said.</p>
<p>“Fuck you,” Caecus shot back, head aching and not in the mood to deal with her bullshit at the moment. “You did that on purpose.”</p>
<p>Nona snorted. “I was doing you a favor. I proved you weren’t lying about your little ‘fits’.”</p>
<p>He hated the emphasis she put on that word, mocking. He glared in her direction, not daring to look up. One vision was more than enough for today, thank you. </p>
<p>Half a second later a small body slammed into his legs. “You wouldn’t wake up,” Musca said. “It was scary. Your eyes were open but you weren’t moving or anything.”</p>
<p>“Scared the shit out of us,” Delere muttered.</p>
<p>The girls said nothing, but Caecus could feel them looking at him, and Jacor had a hand on Caecus’s shoulder. Shit, how had he been carrying Caecus when he didn’t know where they were? Why had he been the one carrying Caecus? Not that there was really anyone other than Nona who could have and he truly didn’t want to think about Nona having access to his unconscious body again. No thank you.</p>
<p>“I’ll try not to do that again any time soon. Did someone grab my blindfold?” Musca pressed cloth into his hand and Caecus tugged it on quickly, relaxing once he was sure that he wasn’t going to be dragged into a vision again. “Thank you. Nona, I assume we’re going to Aulus?”</p>
<p>“Those were my orders,” she said, a bit too cheerful to be anything but annoyed at having Aulus order her around again. “I could be doing something useful, but I’m here fetching you.”</p>
<p>“Well I wish it was Suhayl here, so we’re both unhappy.”</p>
<p>Nona snorted. “Of course you do. You’re both cowards.” Ah, there was Nona’s usual disdain clear and real. He still didn’t know what had happened between her and Suhayl to make them dislike each other so much. Then again, they did have very different philosophies toward life. “Better walk faster. This isn’t the sort of group that should be walking around in the daylight.”</p>
<p>“Well you should have waited until night like we originally planned.”</p>
<p>“Well maybe I have things I’d rather be doing,” Nona shot back.</p>
<p>“Are you always like this?” Acies grumbled.</p>
<p>“No. He used to just press his lips together and make constipated faces.”</p>
<p>“I’m too done with everything to be freaked out by you,” Caecus sighed.</p>
<p>Nona snorted again, and Caecus flinched as she was suddenly there, patting his face. “This is how you should have been from the start. You’re better showing a spine.”</p>
<p>Caecus scowled and kept his body between her and Musca.</p>
<p>One more tap and he bared his teeth. If she tried again, he was going to bite her, childish or not. “So much wasted potential,” Nona sighed. “But you’re more useful than before so that’s something. Have you thought about worshippers more?”</p>
<p>“Not everyone is like you.”</p>
<p>“I know. It’s a pity. The world would move faster if they were.”</p>
<p>“Caecus are you in a cult?” Acies asked bluntly.</p>
<p>Nona laughed. And kept laughing as she presumably returned to leading the way.</p>
<p>“That sure wasn’t reassuring at all,” Delere muttered.</p>
<p>“I’m going to leave it at ‘it’s complicated’,” Caecus said with a sigh.</p>
<p>“…So it is a cult. Ow, Arta!”</p>
<p>“Acies, please stop talking,” her sister said.</p>
<p>A moment later, Delere said, “Please tell me we’re not going in there.”</p>
<p>“We’re going in there,” Nona said.</p>
<p>“You’ve been walking the sewers every time?” Delere asked.</p>
<p>“Oh.” Caecus tilted his head, glad to finally know where they were. “You get used to it actually.”</p>
<p>“Do you. Well this is going to be terrible,” she muttered.</p>
<p>“Relax, the water level is low right now,” Nona said. “It’s fine.”</p>
<p>“That just means the literal shit is more concentrated,” Delere said, but Caecus could hear her voice become fainter, so she must have ducked in after Nona with the girls.</p>
<p>Caecus stood with Jacor and Musca. This was so much more complicated with more people. Finally, he took Musca’s hand in his right and Jacor’s in his left. “Lead on,” he said to Musca. A tiny slice of normalcy in all this.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Nona ditched them in the secret room, something about seeing to something else in Aulus’s plans. Regardless, it left Caecus with his family, standing in a hidden room with no idea what to do because naturally no one was waiting for them because no one was expecting them for hours.</p>
<p>“I really don’t like her,” Caecus muttered, counting steps to the stairway Aulus used to reach the main part of the building. “One minute she’s all touchy, the next she’s threatening to stab something, or she’s making comments that I don’t even know what to read into!”</p>
<p>“Why do you even talk to her then?” Musca asked. He was guiding Jacor for the moment since Caecus did actually know where most things were at the moment.</p>
<p>“I don’t exactly have a choice. She’s the one Aulus sends to get me most of the time. I think she just has the most time.” Did Nona even have a job? She didn’t have a trade or children like Verena, she wasn’t a slave like Merula. Aulus and Justinian and Suhayl all had occupations. And she wasn’t homeless like Caecus was. That still left a wide range of possibilities, but he didn’t really have an idea what sort of life fit her. Maybe she was nobility? He opened the hatch to let them up after a few fumbled attempts to find the latch. Aulus or Suhayl typically did this part.</p>
<p>“Then ask for someone else,” Arta said sensibly.</p>
<p>Caecus grimaced. “Aulus trusts her. I’d have to explain why and…”</p>
<p>“And Aulus is strict?” Acies asked, tension in her voice.</p>
<p>“The opposite actually.” He made his way down Aulus’s hall, feet carrying him the now familiar route almost on automatic. “He’s… optimistic and caring and something about disappointing him feels like kicking a stray dog that just wants to be friendly.” Aulus was a grown man and serious as well but… Honestly, he was a bit naïve and Caecus didn’t think the man should trust near as easily as he did just because they were all demigods. If Caecus had wanted to rob him blind, he’d had plenty of opportunity.</p>
<p>“Where exactly are we going?” Arta asked.</p>
<p>“Right here.” Caecus pushed the door to his usual room open. It was small, but it was still large enough for them to pile in with their belongings.</p>
<p>“A room?” Acies said skeptically.</p>
<p>“My room,” Caecus corrected. “So no one can complain that we’re not where we should be.” He’d only run into serving staff once, but that had been more than enough to want to avoid a repeat. Maybe if he had a nice bath and some new clothing he’d feel less self-conscious.</p>
<p>“…He gave you a room?” Delere said slowly.</p>
<p>“Yes?” Caecus tipped his head her direction.</p>
<p>“And you still came back.”</p>
<p>“Of course I did.” He pinched the bridge of his nose through the blindfold. “I thought I’d made it clear that you’re family. Just because it’s nice here doesn’t mean I wasn’t more at home with you.” Although Suhayl had been making both places feel like home.</p>
<p>Speaking of… Caecus heard the soft scuff of the next door opening a crack. “Caecus?” Suhayl said.</p>
<p>He must have opened the door because Caecus could hear everyone take a step back and Musca hide behind him. Of course they did. To them, Suhayl was just a very large alpha that might be a threat. And yet beyond the first wary moment of scenting him, to Caecus Suhayl had never registered as terrifying at all. Caecus stepped forward and reached for one of Suhayl’s hands. It was given without protest, and Caecus brought it to his face.</p>
<p>“Huh,” he heard Delere grunt behind him.</p>
<p>Embarrassing. But there wasn’t a simpler way of showing that Suhayl was someone Caecus trusted than scenting him and letting him scent him back. Suhayl brushed his wrist against Caecus’s jaw before letting his thumb trace an arc along Caecus’s cheek. “I see you brought your family,” Suhayl said softly. He’d seen them before at a distance, but never so close.</p>
<p>“I did. Suhayl, this is Delere and Jacor,” he waved vaguely where he thought they’d be, “the twins are Arta and Acies and Musca is the youngest. Everyone, this is Suhayl.”</p>
<p>“And he’d be your heat-friend,” Delere said in a knowing tone of voice.</p>
<p>Caecus flushed. “That’s. Do you have to say it like that?”</p>
<p>Suhayl laughed softly. “I would hope that we are more than that sort of friendship of convenience by this point.”</p>
<p>Caecus twitched, turning back toward him, curse those re-learned visual cues. “Of course you are.”</p>
<p>“I am teasing,” Suhayl said with another gentle brush along his jaw that paused. He tilted Caecus’s head to the side slightly and a gentle touch prodded where Caecus’s head ached. “You are bruised.” His hands found sore spots on Caecus’s arm and hip too and Caecus winced. “What happened?”</p>
<p>“Nona interrupting happened,” Caecus said, not squirming away even though some of that careful prodding hurt. He winced at a tiny spike in dislike for Nona that was surprisingly not his own emotions. Suhayl had control enough that he had never really projected emotion on Caecus without meaning to. “I’m fine. I just had one of my…fits…while I was standing on rough cobblestones.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Acies cut in. “This is weird. Are you courting or just sleeping together? And how long has this been happening?”</p>
<p>“At least since two heats ago,” Delere said. “And you know he doesn’t do sex.”</p>
<p>“I’m just saying it <em>looks</em> like a sex thing.”</p>
<p>“Kid you wouldn’t know sex if you walked in on it.”</p>
<p>“We’re not that sheltered. We do live with you.” Acies huffed.</p>
<p>Delere snorted. “I’ve been retired as long as you’ve known me, kiddo.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but you have no filter,” Acies shot back.</p>
<p>“There’s nothing sexual going on,” Caecus hissed. He felt like his face was going to burn off. He was close enough to Suhayl to feel the small chuckle of laughter that escaped him, which actually helped the mortification a little bit. Hard to be too upset when someone he liked was amused.</p>
<p>“It is not sexual,” Suhayl said into the growing back and forth between Acies and Delere, “but it is not platonic either. At least it is not on my end.”</p>
<p>And Caecus’s face could get redder. They had never put words toward what this… this thing was. Well. Now he was sure it was romantic on Suhayl’s end at least. And damn it, he already knew where his own heart lay. He fell hard and fast for someone that took the time to be gentle with him it seemed. At least, that was the similarity between this time and Sol. “It’s mutual,” he muttered, giving Suhayl’s hand a squeeze. The flash of happiness from him was again unprompted, but it might have been intentional. It was kind of nice to feel something from Suhayl considering he probably felt every mess of emotion that went on in Caecus’s head when they touched.</p>
<p>He took a step back because there was only so much exhibitionism he was comfortable with. He’d always preferred to indulge in intimacy in private than with prying eyes. “They’ve agreed to come,” Caecus said to Suhayl. “Provided Aulus can actually protect us.”</p>
<p>“He can and will,” Suhayl said with complete confidence in their leader. He trusted Aulus completely, and that loyalty was touching even if Caecus wasn’t sure Aulus wholly deserved it. “If nothing else, I can ensure your safety personally.”</p>
<p>Caecus tilted his head, surprised. “You’re not protecting Aulus?”</p>
<p>“He has his personal guards,” Suhayl explained. “I am… not considered one of the guard staff. I am more an unofficial protection, and will be with the staff for their safety as well as anyone Aulus has promised to aid.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Honestly it shouldn’t be a surprise since Suhayl had said he’d essentially deserted the military to serve Aulus instead, and he seemed to spend more time researching and writing than anything guard related that Caecus had noticed, but he’d assumed that Suhayl had regular duties too. “I suppose Aulus is lucky enough he’ll live through anything but the rest of us poor souls need the extra help anyway.”</p>
<p>“Yes, that as well,” Suhayl said with the edge of dry amusement that went over everyone else’s heads.</p>
<p>“…Did Verena accept? Or Merula? I know Justinian will lean on Aulus and Nona will be… Nona.”</p>
<p>“Verena has, reluctantly, agreed. She and her family will be by later. They are trying to salvage as much of their business as possible.”</p>
<p>Leaving a lifetime of a settled home and shop would be difficult, Caecus thought, though he only could understand it in the abstract. He’d not had enough possessions to fit in more than a shoulder bag in years. Choosing only the essentials while worrying for a husband and children had to be difficult for her. “And Merula?”</p>
<p>Suhayl’s hesitation made Caecus frown. The vision flashed through his mind.</p>
<p>“She’s going to do something foolish isn’t she?” he sighed. “And self-destructive.”</p>
<p>“…Aulus’s plan hinges on her support,” Suhayl said carefully.</p>
<p>“By her own choice?”</p>
<p>“He would never force anyone into such a position.”</p>
<p>Force? No. Aulus was not one to force. He gained loyalty in small kindnesses and acts of favor until it felt natural to fall on his side. Until those favors piled up and it felt like a debt was owed. He would never call in on it, no, but they would do that for him, wouldn’t they? Loyalty earned and paid back and Aulus knew that even if he never manipulated cruelly like Nona did. Nor forcefully like Suhayl had the power to do. Everything fell into place for Aulus, and that must be one more aspect of his luck power. For Merula, a slave, an omega, of course she would take risks for him. Of course she would act for the man who gave her a sliver of freedom and choice in a world where she had none.</p>
<p>Caecus could understand it only too well and it twisted in his gut, knowledge overlapping with the falling bird in his mind. “Suhayl, she is going to die if she does this.”</p>
<p>“You’re sure?” Suhayl asked, probably feeling the edge of anxiety from Caecus as much as smelling it in his scent.</p>
<p>He didn’t want to see these portents of death. He wanted to be able to change them. This time, please let him change it. Caecus touched Suhayl’s arm, projecting the feeling from the vision toward him and heard the hiss of breath through Suhayl’s teeth. “Please. Stop her.”</p>
<p>“I am needed here,” Suhayl said, troubled. “I am going to be helping people evacuate…”</p>
<p>Caecus felt the presence of his small, terribly important family behind him and couldn’t risk their chances in this. But… “Then tell me where to go and I’ll do something.”</p>
<p>“Go?” Acies said behind him. “You’re basically blind and apparently have fainting spells when you’re not! How would you get anywhere let alone be useful?”</p>
<p>“I know that!” Caecus said, frustration boiling in him. He well knows how it feels to be useless. “But I can’t just let—” <em>Bird falling breaking, black (gold) feathers shattering—</em></p>
<p>“Caecus,” Suhayl’s touch drew him from the vivid memory. “You feel you must do this?”</p>
<p>“<em>Yes.</em>” There was something burning in him. It wasn’t too late yet (this time). Merula wasn’t important to him, or even a friend really, nothing to him compared to Sol, but this meant everything at the same time.</p>
<p>“Very well. I believe you.” A pause and then Suhayl said with slow deliberation, “I believe <em>in</em> you.”</p>
<p>Something warm sparked through Caecus, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since warm nights huddled with Sol, tossing theories about visions back and forth. Not since scarred hands cupped his cheeks and Sol said, “I believe you. You and me, we can become great. With you by my side, with your visions, we’ll be a step ahead of everyone. No more need to worry about anything.” It had been a burning, fierce sort of warmth then, knowing Solitus believed he could help him, really help him make their lives better. Knowing he was loved.</p>
<p>This was no less warm, but where Sol’s belief had been wild, driven, burning, Suhayl’s was the steady warmth of a hearth. Stable. Calm and enduring. There was no expectation behind it, just trust, and it made Caecus’s breath hitch, stutter in his chest.</p>
<p>Belief.</p>
<p>He could feel their belief but he’d never realized it until then. Not with Sol or the way there were smaller warmths in Musca, or Acies and Arta. He’d thought it was him, his love for them that brought the feeling. The joy in love and trust received in turn.</p>
<p>But they were demi-gods, weren’t they? And what was a god without belief? No wonder he’d felt so cold and empty after Sol died. So powerless. He had been powerless in more ways than one.</p>
<p>Belief was strength. Power.</p>
<p>“I believe in you too,” Caecus said. He felt a rush of affection where Suhayl’s skin touched his own. “Where is Merula?”</p>
<p>“She is supposed to go to the aqueducts to the north.”</p>
<p>So far…</p>
<p>“How do you plan to get there?”</p>
<p>He sure wouldn’t be able to walk it quickly, not even if he did have eyesight to help with direction and roadblocks. It would be so much simpler if it was as instantaneous as his damned visions. With the belief still warm in him, the edge of an idea tickled in the back of his mind. He’d never done it, but if his mind could walk the other-space, surely there was a way for his body to do so too?</p>
<p>Caecus reached, like he did when he tried to call the vision to him. Surprisingly he could feel it, the in-between place, as if it had always been there just waiting for his touch. And with that touch he knew he could pull himself through. How much power did Suhayl’s belief hold?</p>
<p>“Ah,” said Suhayl, fingers still against Caecus’s cheek. “That is a dangerous method to use.”</p>
<p>“My mind has been there a hundred times.”</p>
<p>“The mind is not the body.”</p>
<p>“It is possible though?”</p>
<p>“Yes…” Suhayl didn’t sound happy about it though.</p>
<p>“What are you planning to do?” Delere cut in. “Hey, you’re not going to let him go do something stupid and dangerous are you? What kind of alpha are you?”</p>
<p>“I do not own him,” Suhayl said in a deliberate, calm way that Caecus was beginning to suspect meant he was feeling quite a lot of things and determined to show none of them.</p>
<p>Caecus turned toward her, reaching until he felt her hand. Several other hands grabbed on too, Musca’s small hand half wrapped around his wrist. “I’m going to come back. I just. I need to.”</p>
<p>“Why? You just went and dragged us here, you can’t go and leave us alone with strangers,” Acies said.</p>
<p>How could he sum up a tangled mess of emotions and trauma and Sol’s broken body seared in his memory with a few measly words? Caecus shook his head. “I have to.”</p>
<p>“What is he going to do?” Delere demanded, words aimed past Caecus.</p>
<p>“Walk,” Suhayl said unhappily. “In a way only some of us can.”</p>
<p>“Us?”</p>
<p>Caecus pulled his hand free, heart breaking when Musca tried to dig his nails into him to stop him. “I’ll be back. Believe in me that I’ll be back.” Because he would need the belief, he could feel it in the air, in his bones, in the wayward touch of the in-between place. Caecus reached with his mind and pulled.</p>
<p>It was like stepping through a doorway. It was like trying to climb the riverbank when it was steep and wet with mud. It was the backlash of a terrible vision and like coming home. His hand met cool stone and the air smelled like bitter citrus.</p>
<p>Caecus breathed. This was his body here. He reached for his blindfold and saw familiar swirling mist, a stone wall and orange trees. There was a second stone fixture too, a small circular pond, the water mirror smooth.</p>
<p>He felt too solid for this world of mist and change. This was no place for flesh and bone, and he could feel it pressing in on him in a way Caecus didn’t have words for.</p>
<p><em>Oh</em>, the Voice said, curling around him like an old, uncomfortable friend. <em>Oh, finally you’re using that potential.</em></p>
<p>“Quiet,” Caecus said at it, his hair rising all along his arms at the ghostly feeling of being watched. “Quiet, I’m not here for you.”</p>
<p>In the pool’s still waters he sees his reflection and swirling gray cloud-mist that breaks with a flash of blue. Blue sky, that tug like a vision but he didn’t get pulled into one, and Caecus saw something else in the reflection. A figure in the dark. A glint of a knife. Roiling shadows. There. He focused on the shadows, feeling their unnatural energy. There.</p>
<p>It was the feeling of god-borne power like any of their demigod powers, something that once noticed was impossible not to feel and recognize. Merula.</p>
<p>She didn’t look how he expected her to. Somehow with her death-sweet scent, he’d expected someone more the typical waifish omega stereotype, pale and skeletal; but Merula was stocky and short, strong from labor. Her hair was short and dark against golden brown skin. In her hand was a bloody knife. Not a shred of emotion crossed her face.</p>
<p>Caecus gripped the edge of the pool. Was this now? Was this a premonition? Was it—?</p>
<p><em>Belief is a strong thing, isn’t it? </em>the Voice said. <em>And if you’d listened to me from the start, you could have been this strong all along. Belief, </em>it said, feeling like it curled around Caecus where he stood, <em>sacrifice. The power held in those acts can raise you far above an average human. Look at how far she has come embracing this.</em></p>
<p>His eyes were drawn back to the bloody knife. Oh.</p>
<p>What—who?—had been the sacrifice? His stomach turned. He’d never liked blood, liked it even less after it started reminding him of Sol’s broken body.</p>
<p>
  <em>What will you do now? How will you use that power?</em>
</p>
<p>Right, no matter what he felt, he came here for a reason. And that reason held a knife and so little reaction emotionally that he didn’t know how to predict what she might do next. He needed to get there. To do… something. Talk. Intervene, something. The Voice whispered something, but he didn’t hear the words or its honeyed promises. Caecus latched his attention on Merula and pulled.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It was dark on the other side, tall shadows from the wall, and nearby buildings cutting off visibility. This was probably a good thing because Caecus returned to reality with a stagger, barely remembering to keep his gaze low. Cobblestones beneath his feet, the scent of water and, more alarming, blood. Caecus turned and found a knife leveled at his face and froze, eyes meeting Merula’s in the dark.</p>
<p>A glimpse past her showed a body on the ground. Male. Well dressed. For half a second he thought it was Aulus, but no, the body type was wrong and the hair too dark.</p>
<p>“Caecus?” Merula said, shock in her voice and scent. The darkness around them seemed to move like a living thing, like some great beast taking a breath.</p>
<p>Ah. Right, she did control shadows didn’t she?</p>
<p>“Your face is bare,” Merula said, meeting his eyes.</p>
<p>Caecus shook his head. He wasn’t the issue at the moment. “Merula, what you’re doing, you don’t have to do it.”</p>
<p>She blinked, slow and calm as she pushed her surprise away. “Don’t I?” She lowered the knife, looking over shoulder at the body. There was blood slowly seeping into the cracks between the cobbles, the smell sickeningly familiar.</p>
<p>“You don’t.” He looked at the body too. “…What exactly are you doing?” He was certain she didn’t have to do it, but he was equally unsure what he was witnessing beyond a bone-deep feeling of power growing here.</p>
<p>“I am clearing a way,” Merula said. There was an aqueduct above them, a connecting point from outside the wall to in. There should be guards here, but somehow there weren’t. Unless there had been and that was why the smell of blood was so strong. Caecus’s stomach clenched. “I am taking my freedom,” she added.</p>
<p>The shadows grew around her, infused with her death-scent and blood. A soft crackling sound came from the wall and Caecus understood. She meant clearing the way literally. She was going to break the wall.</p>
<p>“I have dreamed of freedom for a very long time,” Merula said, staring at the wall as tiny cracks appeared, spread and grew as tendrils of darkness wormed deeper into them. “I used to dream of becoming a god and ripping the world down around me, you know. A slave ascending to godhood.” Her voice was hollow. “An omega strong enough to put every alpha who dared overstep their boundaries in their place.”</p>
<p>A pang of sympathy and understanding hit him. The feeling of wandering hands and oppressive scents hitting hard in his memory. “Merula…”</p>
<p>Merula looked back at him with a smile that was as warm and full as an icy void. “No one is going to believe that can happen. Just like you can’t so easily rise from being a beggar. But I can do this. I can give this existence some meaning.”</p>
<p>The wall cracks like a thunderclap. A stone falls, large enough to crush a man. Thankfully it doesn’t hit either of them.</p>
<p>“You killed your master,” Caecus said, sure of the body’s identity now. It smells a bit like alpha and shock as he steps closer, just a hint under the blood. “You’re tearing down the wall. Isn’t that enough?”</p>
<p>“Is it?” Merula lifted the knife with its bloody-tacky edge.</p>
<p>“If I can get here from across town, if someone like me can gain that much power, surely you can become more than circumstance made you.”</p>
<p>“Circumstance or nature?” Her scent swirled around him, omega, rot, and resignation. “Caecus, you’ve been Between. You know what you can see there. Aulus’s luck only spreads so far.” Another stone fell. Another. Where were the people? Where were guards being drawn toward the sound, the residents checking why the world was breaking? The air was oppressive and the dark coming from Merula was deep enough it could swallow a man whole. “This group… I would have killed myself and taken everyone close with me a long time ago without them. It’s time to pay that back.”</p>
<p>Her knife rose, turning toward herself and Caecus knew in that moment that it wasn’t guards he had to worry about, it was Merula herself.</p>
<p>“No!”</p>
<p>He lunged as the knife fell and the air hummed with the feeling of promise, ritual nearing completion. Burning pain radiated from his hand as the blade glanced off it, hitting Merula’s throat even with the attempt to stop it. It wasn’t a clean strike though.</p>
<p>Merula choked, knife falling from her fingers. Both their blood spattered the ground.</p>
<p>“No, no!” Caecus closed a hand over her neck and Merula didn’t fight, didn’t try to stop him or stop the flow of blood either. Her eyes were locked on the wall where more and more stones were falling, like a localized apocalypse. Blood slipped between Caecus’s fingers, sticky and hot. “No.”</p>
<p>He couldn’t save her. Caecus couldn’t do that. But he wasn’t alone and there was power still humming in him, for better or worse.</p>
<p>There was a definite hole in the wall when Caecus <em>pulled </em>at the world. The world blurred and burned and Merula was hot in his grasp. Her shadows thrashed around them as they were yanked from their task, curling uselessly in the air and lashing back at them. One bit into Caecus’s cheek and he flinched. They took several stones from the wall with them, invading the world Between, the mists full of blood-stink and power.</p>
<p>Merula choked again and stared up at him, the edge of anger there, but she was fading, dying, burning that life out for a purpose. Caecus felt strain somewhere inside as he yanked on the world again, barely able to make himself think of Suhayl and his steady presence and scent. He didn’t know what he was doing. He was desperate and instinct was a strong thing. He called and the mists shifted in answer, a crystal-clear image of Suhayl burned into his being before the universe wrenched again, somehow twice as painful as the last.</p>
<p>He didn’t know what he left behind, but it felt like something wrenched in him and left him aching, aching as cool tile slammed into his knees and the familiar scents of Aulus’s home swirled around him mixed with the awful smell of blood. “Don’t die,” he demanded, tried to impress with words and scent and power into Merula. “Don’t die.”</p>
<p>Her eyes fluttered, closing, the heartbeat in her neck battering as fast as birds’ wings. Another hand joined his. Larger, stronger, darker and as scarred as Caecus’s own.</p>
<p>“I have her,” Suhayl rumbled above him. “Let go, I have her.”</p>
<p>And Caecus let go because he trusted Suhayl on an instinctive level he would never fully understand.</p>
<p>Merula was whisked away and Caecus sat, trembling and bleeding on the floor, something in him still spiking and reaching and trying to shape the world even though he knew he couldn’t control fate no matter how much he wanted to. He could only try to defy it and hope the efforts were enough.</p>
<p>“Oh my god,” Delere said somewhere off to the side. “Holy fuck.”</p>
<p>Caecus lifted his head up enough to realize that he was in the room Aulus gave him, the one where he’d left the others under Suhayl’s watch. Of course he was. Of course, because he’d pulled and the power had taken him to the most familiar place.</p>
<p>“Delere,” he mumbled, feeling shock-shaky and tired. Everyone who had the ability to stared at him in horror.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Delere said again. “You’re bleeding.”</p>
<p>Caecus looked at his hands, and oh, that wasn’t all Merula’s blood, was it?</p>
<p>“Girls, get water and a cloth,” Delere said, waving her hand at the stand where Aulus always left him water, food, a cloth to clean himself with.</p>
<p>Arta moved first, getting over her shock enough to grab the water jug, Acies a step behind her as she grabbed the cloth. They slopped water over Caecus’s hands, their grip shaking as much as Caecus was.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” Arta said. “Sorry.”</p>
<p>“What the hell is going on?” Acies asked, wiping blood away without care for Caecus’s wound.</p>
<p>He hissed but let her work. His heart still beat wildly in his chest, the edge of power still thrumming in his veins. “I… I did what I needed to do.”</p>
<p>“You vanished into thin air!” Acies said. “You stepped forward and were gone! And then you’re back again with a half-dead woman and bleeding all over the place!”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t trying to get injured, it just happened. Merula tried to kill herself—”</p>
<p>“So you, what, tried to grab the knife?” Acies asked, incredulous.</p>
<p>“Er.”</p>
<p>“Give us a hint at the there-and-gone?” Delere said gruffly.</p>
<p>Caecus looked at her, sat in the corner with a pale Jacor by her side and a trembling Musca gripping her hand like a lifeline and knew he’d hurt them again, even though he hadn’t meant to. Once by lying about his sight, twice by hiding the truth of Aulus’s group, and now by throwing the reality of what he was in their faces without so much as a warning.</p>
<p>Where could he start? He barely understood it all himself and it was his life. “From when I was very little I sometimes did or saw strange, impossible things.” He’d start at the beginning. “My parents thought it was an illness, I think, but it was just something that happened to me. I’d see flashes of visions, or another place with mist and stone and orange trees. It took years to realize I was seeing metaphors for the future. I didn’t know until I was on the streets after my parents tried to get rid of me.”</p>
<p>“By get rid of, you mean kill? Because of the weird visions?” Delere asked, sharp and probing.</p>
<p>“No.” Caecus blinked. “No, they apprenticed me off to a potter because my mother couldn’t bear the sight of me and it turned out I was an illegitimate product of an affair—no, I ended up on the street because I couldn’t control when the visions happen and it meant I kept having…fits… when I was supposed to be working or learning and I was more trouble than I was worth as an apprentice. I was almost eleven I think?” He didn’t remember the details well. He just remembered feeling abandoned, trying to please the people who’d replaced his parents and failing them even worse. He remembered being terrified and alone and going hungry until Sol’s gang dragged him in. He still had fits—visions—after that, but he hadn’t been the only broken one in the group.</p>
<p>“That’s not what matters,” Caecus said shaking his head. Acies stopped trying to clean his hand out and it throbbed, still caught in her hands and sluggishly leaking blood into one of Aulus’s nice, cream-colored washcloths. “Just. I have always had odd abilities. I didn’t know why until I met Aulus, or more accurately, Nona.” Nona who ripped his blindfold off and made him see the world. Nona who forced her scent on him and tried to act like an alpha when she was nothing but a beta. Nona who still terrified him a little.</p>
<p>“And what are you?” Acies asked skeptically. She wrapped his hand in the cloth and shoved it in his lap. The cloth was slowly staining through, but they didn’t have bandages.</p>
<p>“I’m a child of the old gods,” Caecus said. “All of us are.”</p>
<p>“Us?” Delere asked.</p>
<p>“Aulus’s group. He … collects people like me. Like Suhayl and Merula and Nona. I see the future. Suhayl influences emotion. Merula controls shadows and Nona influences people. And Aulus… Aulus is luck.” Sheer ridiculous, improbable luck that rubbed off on everyone in his circle just a little bit. “I didn’t know I could do what I did tonight until I did it.”</p>
<p>“Meaning you did something even stupider and riskier than it already was,” Delere said with a huff. “Stop doing that. Now that we’re in your little cult master’s house, you’re the only thing standing between us and getting thrown under the feet of invaders when Rome falls.”</p>
<p>“They wouldn’t,” Caecus said, horrified at the thought. “Three of you are children, Aulus wouldn’t.” He’d promised protection for all of them and Caecus had yet to see the man go back on his word. And he had Suhayl’s loyalty too and that meant things. Caecus didn’t know if it was instinct or personal feelings, but Suhayl’s opinion meant a lot, and him backing Aulus, promising to protect the others… He believed him.</p>
<p>“I’d rather not take that chance,” Acies grumbled. “So don’t go dying or pulling anymore disappearing crap.”</p>
<p>“I don’t plan on it.”</p>
<p>Somewhere far in the distance was an alarm bell, and Caecus knew it was the start of the end. Maybe Rome wouldn’t fall tonight. Maybe the wall would be shored up in temporary measures, but a crack had been made in a crumbling façade and now it would all come falling down.</p>
<p>At Delere’s side, Musca made a soft, wrenched sound that tugged at all Caecus’s protective instincts. In a flash, Musca finally crossed the gap between them to slam into Caecus’s side, shaking. He smelled like fear and desolation and the soft scent all children had before they presented. He smelled like Musca and putting that scent, the feel of that small body against his to the visual of a child in his arms felt like meeting some part of Musca all over again. Caecus held him close. “Shh. It will be okay.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to go!” Musca whispered. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want you to leave!”</p>
<p>“I’m not going anywhere.”</p>
<p>Musca just shook his head, buried his face in Caecus’s chest harder. Caecus closed his eyes and bundled him close, falling into the familiar pattern of comfort-giving like this was just another nightmare the children woke from instead of one they were living. After a minute, Arta crept by his side, leaning closer for comfort too, and he welcomed her into the embrace. It took longer for Acies to come, but she did, leaning against his back where he couldn’t hug her, but close enough to take comfort.</p>
<p>His kids.</p>
<p>He’d never, ever have children of his own blood, but these children were his as much as if he had birthed them. He’d tear the world apart to make them safer. They did say an omega parent was a child in danger was a thing to be feared.</p>
<p>The alarm rang on. They would need to go soon, meet with the others. Caecus hoped they would make it safely. He hoped Merula would live. He hoped that there would be a place for them wherever they ended up.</p>
<p>Suhayl’s calming scent wafted around him an indeterminate amount of time later. “Merula is stable,” he said before Caecus could ask.</p>
<p>“Thank god,” Caecus said. “Can she be moved?” He looked up up up at Suhayl’s nod above him.</p>
<p>“We must move quickly though,” Suhayl said. “We should have left already.”</p>
<p>“Then we’ll leave.” Caecus cast a look around. At Delere with her crutch and Jacor who couldn’t see. At Musca, tired and small against him, and Arta and Acies who were scared but determined. Far from an ideal group to flee a city under siege with, but he wouldn’t leave a single one of them behind.</p>
<p>Suhayl held out a hand and Caecus took it, accepting the warmth and determination that flashed from Suhayl’s skin to his own. Caecus took his hand and scented him, taking strength from the closeness. There was Suhayl to guide them, the children to be strong for. Delere and Jacor to protect and grant a better life for. He had so much to pay back to them. Caecus tugged his blindfold back into place. His hand ached and his cheek was still bleeding slightly too, but he could walk.</p>
<p>“Let’s go,” Caecus said.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The city of Rome and its familiar scents were growing faint behind them, water and plants and horses overpowering the city smells. Caecus felt very small, a tiny pebble in the pool of the world, one more refugee in the group Aulus had somehow managed to smuggle out. Caecus had lived in Rome since he was ten, hadn’t left the city in all this time.</p>
<p>He was leaving behind the only home he could really remember, and leaving behind any trace of Solitus left there as well. If he’d lived, would Sol understand? He’d been a survivor. A schemer. A protector. Surely he’d have made the same choice if he’d had to choose all those years ago with a handful of kids and all of them relying on him. Surely he’d be glad that Caecus was choosing to live another day.</p>
<p>Caecus leaned against Suhayl’s warm side, Musca across Caecus’s lap and lulled to sleep with the motion of their travel.</p>
<p>He had everyone he still loved here. Safe. Alive. Wrapped up in a huddled pile like he’d slept in for years, all smelling like each other, like family. Caecus snuggled closer to Suhayl, breathing him in. He could start over with them. Compared to losing Sol and his whole life until that point, this was barely a hardship. He wasn’t alone and he was loved. Caecus let Suhayl’s scent draw him off to sleep, the beginning bud of hope growing in him.</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>Beans plinked into bowls. Fingers found another pod, split it, shelling with practiced, repetitive motions. Caecus would never have expected to be shelling beans with Delere and Jacor a year and a half ago, let alone be doing the task in a nobleman’s home in Constantinople. But life had been taking a lot of turns since Nona barged into it in her uniquely assertive way. The main kitchen was bustling but where they sat together outside it was calm and quieter.</p>
<p>Most days they were given the long, repetitive preparation tasks that were hard to mess up. Caecus didn’t mind that much. For the first time in a long time, he had something besides begging to fill his days, and a way to be useful even while he still remained ‘blind’ most of the time. More importantly, for the first time in almost a decade he had enough to eat and drink and a warm place to sleep every day. The last time he looked at his own face, it had looked a bit less like bones were trying to escape his skin and more like there was a regular man starting to emerge.</p>
<p>Somewhere in the halls, Acies and Arta were probably gathering up laundry to be washed. Musca would be helping, tending the wash water fires.</p>
<p>This was not the life Caecus pictured for them. Not the life he pictured for himself, but it was more than a step above where they’d been before. He no longer felt Musca’s ribs when they curled up at night and the girls had settled into a discreet beta scent as puberty finally caught up with steady nutrition.</p>
<p>Acies was being courted already, by one of the servant boys in Aulus’s household, and it amused and worried Caecus in equal measure. Somehow the boy hadn’t fled from her sharp tongue yet.</p>
<p>The air was different here, the scents and sounds foreign. Too many years living on the street and with street gangs left a normal household as foreign as a different country though, so Caecus couldn’t pin it on the new location alone. He’d be lost here without his family. More lost without Suhayl and Aulus.</p>
<p>“I can finally see an end to the beans,” Delere said, the only eyes among them. There was relief in her scent. “I never thought there’d be a day where I’d complain about an abundance food, but there are too many beans.”</p>
<p>“There aren’t that many beans,” Jacor said with a steady voice. The plinks of beans never slowed from his work spot. He had the surest hands of the three of them despite the only one of them that was actually blind. “This can’t be for more than a few weeks’ worth at most.”</p>
<p>“I can’t believe how many beans we’ll be eating,” Delere joked instead.</p>
<p>“Much better than plain bread,” Jacor said in return, mock-solemn.</p>
<p>It was familiar, joking about that sort of thing. That, at least, had not changed while so many other things had.</p>
<p>A breeze carried a familiar scent; warm sand, parchment and spice. Caecus turned his nose toward it to breathe it in deeper on instinct. He felt a tug in his chest.</p>
<p>“Ah, looks like your man is here for you,” Delere said with a teasing tone. She wasn’t so wary of Suhayl anymore, not after seeing firsthand the care he showed others and the restraint he had in every motion. He was an alpha, yes, but one fully aware of how others could perceive him, taking care to never press that on others.</p>
<p>“He might not be here for me,” Caecus said, though they both knew Suhayl was. He kept himself away from most of Aulus’s staff the majority of the time. Caecus knew now that it was because Aulus’s oldest son disliked him and Suhayl was ever trying to avoid causing more familial conflict than what Aulus created just by being himself. As Suhayl got closer, Caecus could smell ink on him too, likely from another day spent working on scholarly pursuits. There were texts here that Suhayl could read and Aulus couldn’t that Suhayl was meticulously translating, bit by bit with his usual patient care.</p>
<p>“Caecus,” Suhayl said as he got close. “Delere, Jacor.” Caecus could picture the polite nod of his head. Suhayl’s warm body came to a stop at Caecus’s side and Caecus gravitated toward it and the comforting scent. That place in his chest warmed too, bright where it had been hollow and scarred. “May I ask when Caecus will next be free?”</p>
<p>Delere snorted. “You can take him now,” she said. There was a rustle as she stole the basket of beans Caecus was working through from him.</p>
<p>“But—” Caecus protested, knowing he still had a finger-length deep of beans to go.</p>
<p>“We can handle the rest,” Delere said. It was the same amused voice she used whenever Acies brought up another way the serving boy was courting her. Acies remained baffled and suspicious and Delere always amused with an underlying fond protectiveness. “Go spend time with your bond mate.”</p>
<p>Caecus flushed, hand going to the recent bite. It was opposite the one Sol left on his skin, two imprints of teeth-marks forever set in his skin, and the newness of it all still caught him in his chest like remembering his steps wrong and slipping on what should be level ground. He still had no idea why Suhayl would choose him to mark, no matter how Suhayl pressed warm-bright emotion against his skin in twilight hours like if he shared it enough it would stick in Caecus’s head that Caecus made something in Suhayl feel as calm and steady and good as Suhayl made him feel.</p>
<p>Suhayl’s fingertips brushed his jaw and he scented his wrist without thought, without self-consciousness because it felt <em>right </em>how their scents mingled together. Not even Delere and Jacor’s small, amused sounds could change that feeling.</p>
<p>“Let me guess,” Caecus said, nose still pressed to Suhayl’s pulse-point. “Aulus is having a meeting.”</p>
<p>“He will be,” Suhayl said. “Later.” Meetings had continued like their lives hadn’t been uprooted, but those meetings had largely been about finding their footing in the new city. Verena’s business had been salvaged, Justinian was working for Aulus as much as Caecus and Suhayl were. Nona was Nona off doing whatever she did with her time. Merula, it seemed, had chosen to stick with Nona now that she was free and no longer recovering from her injuries. Caecus couldn’t understand why she’d want to, but there was something there between them even if he couldn’t define it. And Caecus still Saw for Aulus. But only sometimes. He had choice firmly held in his hands and wasn’t going to relinquish it to anyone anymore, not even if he did owe Aulus so much. It was something Suhayl backed him up on.</p>
<p>“And in the meantime?” Caecus asked.</p>
<p>A flash of amusement sparked from Suhayl to Caecus, warm scent gone warmer. “I found a scroll you might like to read together.”</p>
<p>Meaning Caecus would exercise his slowly-relearned literacy skills with Suhayl curled around him like a living blanket. Meaning an hour or more feeling perfectly safe and content with his blindfold off and his mind engaged. Caecus probably smelled embarrassingly happy at the thought of it.</p>
<p>“Oh, just go,” Delere said. “Honestly I don’t know why I didn’t realize you were such a sickening romantic.” She didn’t smell bothered at all, and for all that she was complaining, she sounded happy about it.</p>
<p>Caecus felt a world away from the broken man who’d fallen into her life so many years ago.</p>
<p>He dropped the last few beans from his hands into his bowl and pushed it toward the others. “I’ll make it up to you later.”</p>
<p>“Mm, no rush to come back,” Delere said. “I’ll let Musca know you’re probably sleeping elsewhere.” It was toned suggestively, but they both knew nothing more suggestive than cuddling would be happening. “Take care of him,” Delere said to Suhayl.</p>
<p>“Always,” Suhayl said gravely.</p>
<p>Caecus used a hand on Suhayl’s elbow to tug himself upright. “Goodbye,” Caecus said before they could exchange anything else embarrassing. Suhayl’s touch gently guided him as they walked away.</p>
<p>Something warm and burning and fierce coiled in Caecus’s chest with each step. A smile grew on his face. He sent a burst of that feeling toward Suhayl and felt Suhayl’s steps falter slightly.</p>
<p>“Caecus?’</p>
<p>“I think,” Caecus said, “I might be truly happy.”</p>
<p>There was still no guarantee that things would stay this nice. No way of knowing if Rome’s fall would eventually lead to problems here too, or that Aulus might have his luck one day run out and take all of them with it. But for now Caecus was safe, his loved ones were safe and fed and whole, and he had someone who loved him without judgment who he could love in return. There were crescent marks of his own teeth in Suhayl’s skin tying them together in a way even Sol hadn’t asked for. Caecus wouldn’t have asked for it, but Suahyl had.</p>
<p>Happiness was something Caecus never thought he’d get but here he was.</p>
<p>He’d never have the body he wanted, would always have dry heats and need to be held through them. He would never erase the pain of losing Solitus or the years of struggling to survive. But he’d lived through them and he had this now. And maybe it would end one day, but that didn’t make it less valuable in the moment. Maybe it made it worth even more knowing how little it took for a world to break apart. It made the emotion that much fiercer like some part of him wanted to protect it with all that he was.</p>
<p>And after a moment, Caecus felt that burning feeling reflected back, calmer and steadier and more enduring than his own. Suhayl’s emotions more inclined to believe that this feeling would long outlast this moment.</p>
<p>“I am glad,” Suhayl said with all of his own happiness behind it.</p>
<p>Caecus let himself call this moment, this place, ‘home’.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope people like this? It's a lot more unnerving to put my own characters out here haha. 100% will answer questions if anyone has them, but honestly not sure how many people will read this so... yeah. Some aspects of Caecus's asexuality are drawn from my own experiences with it. I'm well aware that people experience it differently (there is another version of him that is sex neutral, but for the time period and his life experiences/associations, this Caecus will always be sex-repulsed to me. my writing group from college would be so sad to know that haha. they shipped him and suhayl hard :,) ) </p>
<p>Thanks for reading!!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>